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Subscribe to this list via RSS Blog posts tagged in bridges

Posted by on in Culture Blogs

 

A pagan couple once bought a house in the rural part of a Midwestern state. This house stood next to a bridge.

A few days after they'd moved in, there came a knock at the door.

“Hi,” said the couple at the door. “Our car broke down on the bridge; can we use your phone?”

(This, of course, was B.C.: before cell.)

“Sure,” said the home-owners and, being good pagans, they played the gracious host until the tow-truck arrived.

A few days later, there's another knock at the door. Another break-down on the bridge.

A few days after that, it happens again.

Finally, the couple gets pretty sick of it. (Call it hospitality fatigue.) So the husband walks over, stands under the bridge, and really lets loose.

“Listen, you!” he hollers. “I don't know who you are or what you're playing at, but I'm warning you: my wife is a witch, and if this doesn't stop right now, she's going to come over here and take care of things good and proper. And believe you me, you really don't want that to happen!

From that day forward, there were no more break-downs on the bridge.

Last modified on

Posted by on in Culture Blogs
On the Bridge

For more than 30 years now, we've gathered on this bridge on the morning of the winter solstice to watch the newborn Sun rise out of the Mississippi Valley.

They say that every bridge takes a life in the building. This bridge took the life of a poet. Surely a bridge dyed with the blood of a poet will stand for long and long.

People have been watching the Midwinter Sun rise here for long and long as well. As we turn our faces to the southeast on Yule morning, we will face the site of one of the oldest and largest Winter Villages on the Upper Mississippi. Here families that dispersed during the summer to gather, hunt, and farm, would come together to overwinter. At one time, as many as 20,000 people may have lived here: as many, in fact, as live here now.

On the east bank, the living. Here Big Village was located. On the west bank, the dead. Here a row of eleven mounds once stood, where, since perhaps 700 CE, bone bundles were ceremoniously deposited.

Life and death, and the bridge between. Summer and winter, east and west. Here we stand, between, as we have always stood.

Last modified on
Bridges: Some Reflections on the Nature of Sacrifice

At 6:05 p. m. on Wednesday, August 1, 2007, the I-35 bridge over the Mississippi in Minneapolis collapsed. Thirteen people were killed.

Thirteen. On Lammas Eve.

Of many rivers, it is said that they require a life every year. The Mississippi, our “strong brown god” (Tom Eliot) takes many more than that. Last year, here in the metro alone, it was 17.

In the old days, they say, they used to offer to rivers. Nowadays, we mostly don't. But the sacrifices continue, as they will while ever the world endures. Willing or unwilling, they offer themselves, because sacrifice is in the nature of things.

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Recent Comments - Show all comments
  • Steven Posch
    Steven Posch says #
    Somehow in those moments when our lives touch the Big Things, one can only sit back and wonder. My gods.
  • Celeste Lovecharm
    Celeste Lovecharm says #
    My husband crossed that bridge just moments before that happened. He had decided to leave a few minutes early that day. Otherwise

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