Message in a bottle . . .

When I was a kid, my brother and I entertained ourselves during the steamy Illinois summer by sealing notes in bottles and jars, and then bicycling shirtless to the bridge over the Boneyard drainage ditch. Once we arrived, hot tar on High Cross Road sticky under our bare feet, we tossed our missives into swirling brown water and watched them bob out of sight.

That's just what this initial post to Spondizo feels like--flinging verbiage at the universe in hope that some uncanny current will deliver it up to someone who cares.

It could happen; after all, one of my childhood bottles did end up in someone else's hands: a kid my age who telephoned one Saturday afternoon from a town 50 miles downstream to say he'd found my note.

(It was an awkward conversation; after all, the only thing we had in common was a scrap of paper in a mayonnaise jar.)

Twenty-seven years later, I'm still doing the same thing.

So. Here it is. We've begun.

.: Posted by Duane Bidwell on Thursday, February 26, 2004

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Celebrating the thunder at the heart of the universe, Spondizo explores pastoral theology, spiritual formation, and the vocation of caring for each other and the whole of creation.

The site is written and published by Duane R. Bidwell, Ph.D.

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© 2004-2007 Duane Bidwell. All rights reserved. Photograph courtesy of Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, Indiana University Archives (P15776).