Posts Tagged With: Rev. Marion R. Thomas

The Child is Father of the Man

Posted on November 17, 2018 by Karen Thomas Olsen

I hope you are enjoying this continued story about my father and his family. Throughout Dad’s life, from childhood to deathbed, Dad tended to bubble with a kind of joy, a Jesus-joy. It made him delightful to many and peculiar to others. William Wordsworth’s poem, “My Heart Leaps Up” reminds me of my father’s heart — established in childhood, shaping the man and his life.

My Heart Leaps Up

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky:
So was it when my life began;
So is it now I am a man;
So be it when I shall grow old,
Or let me die!
The Child is father of the Man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety. Continue reading →

Categories: Biography | Tags: , | Leave a comment

The Problem Was the House

Posted on October 25, 2018 by Karen Thomas Olsen

Part III: We left off here:

“The problem was the house. Now, the house becomes a main character in this real life story.”

If I were writing a book about my dad and his family (which I’m not), I could develop this “main character”, the house,  beyond the details I’ve been given. I’m thinking of houses as characters in literature.

I think of the professor’s house in C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Or, there’s  221B Baker Street in London, the “home” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle creates for his character, Sherlock Holmes. Last summer, my first daughter visited a place in London, a museum, actually designed to match Doyle’s descriptions of Holme’s apartment! Continue reading →

Categories: Biography, Joy & Suffering -- Good & Evil, Moving | Tags: , | 2 Comments

Getting Home Before Dark

Posted on May 31, 2014 by Karen Thomas Olsen

Some of the best reads for any of us are the journals and writings of our ancestors.  My father died ten years ago this July. Does that make Dad my ancestor?  According to Webster’s, yes.   I tend to think of ancestors as people who lived generations ago, not my own dad — the man whose expressive face is as clear as the sound of his hearty laughter saved in my mind, the man who picked me up and carried me to the house when I fell off my bike, the man on whom I leaned my head and rested as he drove us home after church on Sunday evenings. . . .

Dad’s now my ancestor, certainly my children’s and grandson’s ancestor. So, his writings are now more valuable. Here is one of his poems Continue reading →

Categories: Parenting | Tags: | 2 Comments

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