STAY, in the Breath

letters from a writer & photographer's journey

For those in pain…

The change of the seasons is the same as the boundary between sand and sea, blurred. This week it has nearly seemed Winter, Spring, and Autumn all at once in our slice of wilds. Then to top off this conflux of seasons in these parts we saw something most unique out of any of our years living in a forest by a rushing river so far. We don’t know for.. Read More

Hope Abides and Rivers Flow

Sometimes the thoughts come so fast, so I walk on and on like maybe if I bring my body up to speed I can catch all the thoughts, and then I stop. Depending on where I am at on the property, I am often surrounded by the sound of the rushing river.  Sometimes I’m surrounded by memories. I can see nineteen-year-old-me needing help to walk around the block and how.. Read More

The Deepening Gaze of Faithfulness

In the early morning, of this fairyland I live in, the air is brimming with sound. The roosters remind me I live in rural America but the other bird songs are still so newborn to me that it persists to feel as my first morning here, like the stuff of dreams. In a reverie it feels like I’m enclosed by tropical forest and its reverberations. The bright blue wing of.. 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

Love, Part 5

“Love does not…boast; it is not arrogant, or rude…” -1 Corinthians 13 In our searching for our belonging, there are days we trip over our boasting, arrogance, rudeness. But there is good news, even in this… I was walking high up on a river bank while the sun was sinking low. The tall un-mown grass was swaying in the evening breeze, transporting me in my imagination to a slow motion.. Read More

Love, Part 4

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

To See Hope, To Find Contentment

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

Walking in Health, Listening to The River: Simple Helps to Detox From Stress

The intensity of the river can be heard from our front road, an entire acre away. Its continual word, shh. It’s shushing us. Even as we turn to leave the drive, we’re being reminded. Shush. Maybe we’re learning. We’ve been practicing putting our hands over our eyes while we pray. We’re taking our sense of sight away briefly in hopes to notice it better when it is returned. Maybe, with.. Read More