Sometimes I look skyward and want it to be full of lovely things. Sometimes I’m afraid to look, afraid to find loneliness. Twelve times a year I look into the night and find darkness where light once was. It’s called the new moon, but it took time for me to accept darkness as newness. It railed against my common parlance, my standards of acceptance. Then someone said, “Woman. Moon. Beauty.”.. Read More
Hello friends, I hope you’ve had some time to seek gentleness lately. If you don’t know what I’m talking about click that link later, but for now travel with me a bit? I felt the wind and let things fly away. Weights flew. Hair flew. Concerns about my abilities…flew. Certain ways of eating, seeing, thinking, praying, seeking, flew, flew, flew, flew, flew. All at once, I feel light and like.. Read More
Sometimes the more you say or hear a word the more foreign it becomes. Sometimes the more greasy, from handling, a concept gets the harder it is to get a grasp. I think joy can be like that, which is really sad because…joy. I’ve been thinking on a particular string of words most of this week, the joy of Jesus. I learned of an old song by one of my.. Read More
Love beat like a drum in my veins. Its rhythmic words: be gentle with yourself. It startled me, it sought me, it surrounded me — so that I could sing along one day. Sing, to you. During the rainy season here we watched the river change regularly in depth, tone, and speed. We didn’t know what it meant at first. It just was different from day to day. Soon, we.. Read More
We spilled out our heart, it got shoved back. We spilled out. Though beautiful, we were not seen. I…I took it back before there was a chance to be rejected again. I decided to keep my heart to myself. And, so the pattern goes. The truth is, I have often spilled in the wrong places, the wrong times. Being authentic doesn’t always mean entrusting fragile parts of ourselves to just.. Read More
When the fine rain came today. It struck me as though the air was manifesting some other reality I didn’t know was there, and then, of course it was. It was as though it was less falling and more appearing right in front of my eyes, one million drops at a time, as far as eye could see. Air becoming real, air coming to life, falling to ground to nourish.. Read More
I don’t even know where to begin writing tonight. It has been a wild week or so. If you follow along with me here a bit, hopefully you know I don’t really use that word lightly. On one hand, in the world of much talk of which I likely contribute far more than needed, the word wild seems a good many times less appropriate compared to the amount of its.. Read More
Five months ago, when we first transplanted our family of eight from the Midwest to our new home in the Pacific Northwest, we would see deer families seeming to play tag in our field many days. Tag! It was such a surprise. And, gorgeous Stellar Jays, five or six at a time, would flock to and seem to be playing hide-n-seek in the magnolia trees. It didn’t occur to me.. 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
It’s the sting of the words that we can’t form, the ache in our chest and our throat searching for the relief of understanding, of being understood, that makes us freeze sometimes. There’s a sense of paralyzation even while we’re still fully functioning—going, doing, being—but still no relief. Then when come the hard things up on the horizon, it can be enough to send us into hiding. Tired, we wonder.. Read More