accustomed to the evils so long...

"What appears to be practised by many soon obtains the force of a custom. And human affairs have scarcely ever been in so good a state as for the majority to be pleased with things of real excellence. From the private vices of multitudes, therefore, has arisen public error, or rather a common agreement of vices...It is evident to all who can see, that the world is inundated with more than an ocean of evils... And the remedy is rejected for no other reason, but because we have been accustomed to the evils so long.

a corrupt custom is nothing but an epidemical pestilence."

- John Calvin, dedicatory intro to Institutes of the Christian Religion

word pictures from a morning road-trip

...traveling to Michigan on a spring morning through sunshiny fog-sprinkled countryside....Daddy drives, Mother beside quizzes him on the Baptist catechism: "How many persons are there in the godhead?”…roadside dandelions have gone to seed and their fuzzy gray heads are sodden with morning dew.…countless blossoming lilac bushes adorn the yards of otherwise shoddy and humble dwellings, or merely stand by the road, resplendent with dew-heavy purple clusters…if I were driving I would have stopped to smell them…the otherwise green forests by the highway are now laced with the white-dotted branches of dogwood and wild apple trees…thick pearl-grey strands of mists float out of the valleys and curl over the mountain treetops to rise into the warming morning air....through wispy mist-veils, the soft spring sky shines blue, and as the mist departs, the mountainside's fresh-leaved trees emerge, their pale green foliage vivid against moisture-blackened trunks…some tiny fuchsia flowers on the forest floor flash by almost unseen, surprising smudges of pink against the brown earth….a small plowed field appears in a clearing on a shrubby slope, an oblong spot of bumpy bareness, long grass on every side leans over to encroach on the upturned clods of rich brown earth, thick-strewn with pale, stiff stubble of last year’s cornstalks...

where there are no pictures, words must be taught to suffice