Tag Archives: bucket

Chancy

Chancy: (adj) subject to unpredictable changes and circumstances

My confidence is kept in a bucket. You may not know it, but yours, too.

  • It’s not in a salt shaker, where it can be sprinkled.

It’s not in a cup, where it can be gradually poured.

Generally speaking, I have to take all of my confidence and dump it into the next thing I’m pursuing. Confidence cannot be used sparingly.

So we often find ourselves looking in the face of a “chancy opportunity”–wondering if it’s worth our confidence.

I feel that way about so many things I wouldn’t even know where to start.

I think the American way of government is a chancy proposal, that still demands my full bucket of confidence.

I think the marital institution is a very chancy proposal–fifty-fifty, if you will–which still requires I bring a full bucket of confidence.

I think the whole belief system which contends there is a single God who created the universe and is waiting to meet us in heaven, is rather chancy.

But I certainly cannot enter into it halfheartedly or with extreme doubt.

It’s a chancy thing.

Every day of our lives we dump confidence into our jobs, our families, our doctors, our lawyers–hoping that our great investment will bear dividends.

There is no man or woman alive who does not live by faith.

Just some of us decide to call it God.

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix 

 

Bucket

j-r-practix-with-border-2

Bucket: (n) a roughly cylindrical open container

I set my mind in a twirl this morning thinking about drinking fountains.

If you pause to consider this apparatus, it’s really quite comical. If you’re really thirsty, a drinkingDictionary B fountain is nearly meaningless–plus the fact that they don’t have a napkin dispenser nearby, so you stroll away wiping your mouth on your sleeve.

There’s just enough water that comes out of a drinking fountain to wet your whistle (though I’m sure nobody says “wet your whistle” anymore).

That’s why we invented the bottle–for those occasions when we want more water. Also available is a gallon container if you’ve just done an episode of a Western and have been working in the desert.

And then there’s the bucket.

It is that wonderful container to transfer large quantities of liquid–usually water–very quickly.

It’s the reason that when a house catches fire, nobody requests a Dixie cup brigade. How many Dixie cups of water does it take to put out a fire? No one knows, because no one uses Dixie cups for that purpose. (Once again, I’m not sure anybody still uses Dixie cups…)

I like buckets.

When I see someone walk in carrying a bucket, I know they’re going to do some serious stuff. Otherwise they wouldn’t need a bucket.

They could use a teaspoon.

Or a little bowl.

The presence of a bucket tells me there’s going to be an abundance.

I like abundance … especially when it appears to be coming my way.

 

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix 

 

 

Blueberry

Blueberry: (n) the small, sweet edible berry of the blueberry plant.

Dictionary B

If you ever wonder how important childhood is to our well-being as grown humans, just consider how many everyday items we view that we associate with some activity or some emotion.

For me, it’s an old metal bucket–and blueberries.

When I was a kid, my dad went fishing in Canada at least once a year, and he always came back with this huge metal pail, full of freshly picked blueberries. I don’t know how he picked so many or how he was able to keep them free from harm on the drive home.

But he would come walking into the house carrying this treasure, and to me it communicated one great potential: pies.

I think I was twenty years old before I realized that blueberries could be eaten without being sugared, jellied and stuffed in a crust. For about two weeks we would experience a glut of blueberry pies made by my mother, which promoted a gluttony which still threatens to infest me to this day.

I don’t know if there’s anything in life better than a blueberry pie.

Even though I am a grown male of our species and now eat blueberries separate from pies, when I get anywhere near them, I flash back to that huge tin container … filled to the brim with the little blue champions.

Donate ButtonThank you for enjoying Words from Dic(tionary) —  J.R. Practix 

Jonathan’s Latest Book Release!

PoHymn: A Rustling in the Stagnant

Click here to get your copy now!

PoHymn cover jon