Ponderings from the Porch Swing

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  • Work with Edges

    Driving to work the other day took me one hour and fifty minutes. That is an absurd amount of time to spend getting from one place to another, even by Atlanta standards, the city that is an hour from itself. There were two or three wrecks along the way, traffic backed up in multiple places,…

  • An Armchair on I-285

    There is a remarkable amount of flotsam and jetsam along the side of the interstate. Castoffs from all the cars and trucks going to and fro, everybody in such a hurry to get where they are going – or where they think they have to be at a certain time – and all of them…

  • Fourth Pew from the Back…

    Saturday morning was hot and getting hotter. Classic August “dog day of summer” in West Georgia. We had driven just up the road into Fayetteville to watch the son of an old college friend play soccer. Robert and his beautiful wife Callie were in town from Mountain Brook for a tournament with their travel team,…

  • One Row at a Time

    I didn’t want Ashley to get out of bed this morning. I wanted to pull her back down beside me, bury my face in her shoulder, stay warm under the covers and sleep just a little longer. We love to lay there in the bed in silence together before the sun comes up, not quite…

  • Poetry Between the White Lines…

    I have driven that road more times than I can count, especially in the last week. Through West Georgia – Newnan, Franklin, Texas (the unincorporated Georgia version, not the state), across the state line (welcome to Sweet Home Alabama. Love, Meemaw Ivey) and into east Alabama through Rock Mills and into Roanoke. Past the same…

  • Pacing the sunrise…

    Yesterday morning I wrote about watching the sun scramble up over the pines along Redwine Road. This morning I watched that very same sun come up over Johnson County, Kansas. Earlier this afternoon, somewhere high over the middle of America on my way home from a quick trip to Kansas City, I found myself still…

  • There Is a Beauty in Each New Beginning…

    After the whirlwind of the last four days – starting early Friday morning and ending when we finally got back home to Peachtree City last night – it is hard not to be sad. But I suppose I need a bigger, more lively and substantial word. Sad doesn’t quite seem to do my emotions justice…

  • Rosalyn Lane McMurray Saunders: April 1, 1956 – August 14, 2026

    Rosalyn Lane McMurray Saunders, a writer, photographer, mother, grandmother, lover of children, and lifelong observer of the beauty in God’s world, went to be with the Lord on Friday, August 14, 2026, at the age of 70. Lane died in Fayetteville, Georgia, while visiting her children and grandchildren – exactly where she loved to be.…

  • What does a hummingbird say?

    To all of the readers of Ponderings from the Porch Swing: This is Lane’s oldest son, Thomas, writing this evening with a heart full of hurt as a result of her sudden passing yesterday morning, Friday, August 15 – but also with a heart full near to bursting with love and joy for the outpouring…

  • “In the serenade of the black, the stars are a choir…”

    “And they were canopied by the blue sky, so cloudless, clear, and purely beautiful, that God alone was to be seen in Heaven,” Lord Byron. I think the sky today, dark Caribbean blue with not even a wisp of clouds to mar the sky’s beauty, would inspire Lord Byron. So, so pretty this morning it’s…