James D. Hogan

Advent: Spoken Before God

On November 30, 2025

Hope and its beautiful cousins

I have been thinking about the differences in the ideas of faith and hope. Advent, our friend Blake reminded us last year, is a season that always begins in exile. We read the Old Testament prophets writing from inky darkness, their enemies terrifyingly close, centuries of disappointment collapsing downward in a crushing, overwhelming wave. Hopeless.

Even so, they write toward the only star in the sky they can see.

Advent is often described as a season of hope, but I wondered why it wasn’t thought of as a season of faith. Faith, after all, seems like the underpinning of all this about a Messiah born to save the world. All the things we believe. Hope, faith, belief–they’re all cousins, right?

After Homecoming

By James D. Hogan

On November 10, 2025

In diary

This past weekend, Western had one of its best Homecoming Weekend crowds ever–certainly the best I’ve seen. Downtown was packed for the parade, and our stadium was filled with purple-clad Catamounts. We were playing SoCon rival Mercer, the first-placed team, and a victory would earn Western its first conference championship in university history.

It was guaranteed to be a huge game, and it quickly become a high-scoring back-and-forth. Soon it seemed the team that scored last was going to take it all. With 1:30 left on the clock, WCU drove the ball down field, finding our way within field goal range with just seconds left. Western missed the kick, and Mercer won the day.

I posted the following on the Catamount Sports message board:

Appalachian Houdini

By James D. Hogan

On October 15, 2025

In diary

Fog this morning was like a thick blanket–thicker than thick, a woolly bedspread, a knitted afghan in layers so deep, doubled and tripled, that even the creek bottoms had fallen into clouds. Grey mist suspended in the air protesting subjection to the laws of gravity.

A young buck emerges seemingly out of nowhere. He does not startle at first, but picks up his pace as I come closer, trotting across the road before pausing in the neighbor’s yard, his tail flicking up and down, his two chopstick horns angled heavenward. We are both a bit stunned: where did this strange observer, the man in the SUV wearing a baseball cap, come from so quietly? We both suspect the other of being able to teleport. Not far beyond, a rafter of wild turkeys pause, picking at the remains of a dead squirrel and dozens of black walnuts, all crushed by passing cars.

On the old highway, I see men putting a boat out on the river, stocked with provisions and coffee for a morning of fishing. They float in the fog upon the water, rapids and currents a trance of noise, their fly rods waving back and forth like sorcerers’ wands.