STAY, in the Breath

letters from a writer & photographer's journey

The Faithfulness Writings Begin…

Tears are a language I know well, pain a companion I strive to learn from but often fight. Know that I write to you from a fully human place, it is why I write. “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” – I Corinthians 13:12(b) ESVi So, today, I write with dreams and hopes that as I do, maybe together.. Read More

Sounds Like Joy

Tell me, you whom my soul loves, where you pasture your flock, where you make it lie down at noon; for why should I be like one who veils herself beside the flocks of your companions. ~Shir-Hashirim (Song of Songs) 1:7 I have often heard myself in these words, in all my seeking the signature and footpaths of the Holy One—I want to know His resting place. Sacred intimacy sounds.. Read More

Returning (Home) “Where Are You?”

“Love…endures all things.” -1 Corinthians 13:7 In the confluence of all things, our realities and the ineffable, we stand at a crossroad, peering into the unknown looking for the way home, listening for the voice our soul knows. I know so little, but I find here in this place I know one thing: Love endures all things. We can trust Love knows the way home. I love the story we.. Read More

Learning How To Take a Walk (A Walk to Remember)

“Few people know how to take a walk. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humor, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson I want to know how to take a walk. I love this quote and have come to feel it suits taking a road trip just fine as well. On a road trip spanning eighteen days so.. Read More

Some Things Take Time

Love…believes all things… How lost we could get in these words, how tragic that they would ever be used to promote a gullible mind, blindness, deafness, and infertile ground to truth. Though I could spend too much time writing about what love is not, I want rather to steep with you in all that it is. So I’ve been watching for words and pictures that would open this world further.. Read More

Flying Through the Night…

“Love bears all things…” A few nights ago, I sat on the edge of one of my son’s bed. The next morning he would embark on a great escapade—his first plane trip and without us! Not only this, but a new precedent will be set for how long our family has spent apart. Quietly, this night, we were just sitting in the calm dark before the dawn of what all.. Read More

Deep Cuts, Part Three

Speaking of answering questions… Does rising to make an answer always mean that we have to fully know the answer? Mercifully, no. The call to rise is much less about recognition and has more to do with releasing. Thy life’s a miracle. Speak yet again. King Lear, IV, Vi, 55 This morning as I listen to the voice of the river speak I keep remembering last night, standing at the.. Read More

Deep Cuts, Part Two

(If you missed it, you can read part one here.) Speaking of light… The daytime hours so stark during the summer often make everything feel awash and lost in its blast of luminance, discernment becomes difficult. The mildness of evening and morning light, I think most of us are drawn to its gentleness. We’re drawn to what we can see by its kind flame. Yet here is all this learning again…gentle.. Read More

Deep Cuts, Part One

Overwhelm and stress and the painful places in life—that is the place of love. The space we get to love comes in the harshest and, even what is most easy to perceive as, the cruelest of ways. Love’s kingdom begins at the water’s edge. Sometimes we find the gradual sloping edge, the gentle entry, only to learn in time to take it as grace when it does come so—because Love’s.. Read More

Cries From the Nest (Love, Part 8)

Our little homeschool sat outside in and around the flower and herb gardens for an observation lesson recently, the entire time we sat there a nearby chickadee nest was all astir with tiny and continuous baby-bird chirping. I can still hear it even now as I write you, it’s like a river of a different kind, a river of little cries, rolling on and on. And I wonder if that’s.. Read More