Our family had an opportunity to partake in an event recently that I felt deeply moved by, yet as it moved closer I recognized an old drive within me peaking its head out, one that was afraid of missing out (FOMO); me—on the look-out for the next-great thing. The anticipation that brings joy is not wrong, but sometimes I have let it blind me to the participation in the present.. Read More
I recently traveled for six days without my family and have been home for a little over two weeks. It has taken every bit of that, now home—holding, listening, playing, going for walks, and generally just being together—to restore us back into our rhythms, heal us, to one another. It is a wild, and intensely privileged, position to get to be loved. We pick up where we leave off, but.. Read More
Welcome to the year 2019 my friends! If you are reading this, together we’ve been given the grace of arriving to a new day. It is enough to be alive. We’re ready. I’m glad to be here with you. Some time ago my dear friend and teacher, Keren Hannah Pryor, began to write about liminal spaces, those in-between places, when we are not in one specific place or another, but find.. Read More
It occurred to me this week the way the river can have a similar illusion as an airplane does when you look at it from the opposing direction. If we didn’t know better it could seem as though both were moving in slow motion. How similar this is to family, to life. Sometimes from certain angles, we can look at our lives and buy into an illusion that it’s going.. Read More
How is heaven to come down to earth? Often in the prayers of the early church God is referred to as Eternal One. In some records of the prayer Jesus taught his disciples to pray, it ends with these words: Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. God is the forever One—an idea we both cannot comprehend and that the strangest things bear light upon it… Read More
In the Pacific Northwestern United States there are four distinct seasons, two with incredible contrasting “glory”, that is, presence—summer and winter. It strikes me as something to behold because it is new to me that the marked difference is not hot and cold as I have been accustomed to in the Midwest, but rather dry and wet. This year from the late Spring and throughout Summer to early Fall we.. Read More
There are two doors. I was passing by the other after I had called them for dinner and caught this stacking up in the corner of my eye yesterday. Though I no doubt miss many of these moments, this preciousness caught me. Then this morning I realized I had taken a picture of their three older siblings a little earlier in the day. We had just finished a biology lesson… Read More
Contemplating “our daily bread” lately, in my world, makes more sense imagined like this image — but it feels good and satisfying and I want to capture that. That’s where this photo came from, a place in my soul that says, “take joy”…even if that is more instructive than felt presently. I’m on my way. Yeah, today — this first fresh day of the Biblical year 5779 — I have sought.. Read More
So many thresholds being crossed this summer, I don’t know how or where to begin. I want to tell you all about it all. Knowing I can’t, I’ve been trying to gather and find the big picture in the miraculous, multitudinous details. Last fall when we arrived here, we played in the river, taking our shoes off and wading into the shallow parts even though it was chilly, we’d wait.. Read More
There are wounds that wind our souls so tight we quit breathing from our bellies. That’s how babies breathe. Until the pain comes, we breathe from our bellies. Then we swallow the pain down to our guts and kill ourselves—but we simply think we’re trying to survive. And, in reality, we are. What’s so horrible about that? Why should surviving make us sick? It’s this question I have to capture;.. Read More