I’ve been mostly silent about Charleston, stunned and saddened and totally at a loss to understand the hatred directed toward someone whose skin color just happens to be a different shade. I’ve also been hesitant to speak or write for fear of saying something too stupid, too simple, too superficial. Of speaking without understanding. Of being […]
A Prayer For These Days
Share a prayer for these days in the comments. Your own or an existing one. In the stillness, Sandy
40 Words of Lent 2014: Day 18 (Still Saturday)
“The more I thought about it, . . . I realized C.S. Lewis’s suggestion that we lay aside our fussings and frettings and come in out of the wind was the only viable alternative to a life dictated by anxiety, distraction, and fear.” ~Michelle DeRusha in Spiritual Misfit Word Count: 40 Today’s Reading: John […]
40 Words of Lent 2014: Day 3
It hooted just southeast of my pillow, and I remembered how Abby kept her window shut after she found the feather fearful an owl would whisk her off in talons of torment or perhaps peck her to pieces. Anything’s possible. Word Count: 40 Today’s Reading: Matthew 13-18 In the Stillness, Sandy
the whisper of a fragrance
Caution: It’s Five Minute Friday, and you’ve entered a no-edit zone. ********************** The air breathes cool through the open window, wafts past the clean cotton Yankee votive that releases just a hint of fragrance. The shrub sways in time with the bell rope, and a hummingbird buzzes at the feeder, hovers in place, sips […]
when fear rises
I wake with a headache and a stiff neck. I shiver in the breeze of the open window and pull the sheet up to my chin. I breathe a prayer for those out west who can barely breathe for the heat of the air, for those who can barely breathe for the heat of life, […]
and then i jump
I brush the hair from my mouth and eyes, pull hands up into sweatshirt sleeves, and lean into the wind as we trudge up the path. We gather under the pavilion to struggle into harnesses, clip heavy ropes to anchor loops, tighten helmets. I feel much less brave than I did when I signed […]
five minute friday: fingers of fear
I crack my right eyeball. He’s up on his left elbow, leaning over me, staring… …at the clock, I guess, on the nightstand next to me. Then he’s fiddling with his phone. Did it go off? Or not? After I complained about the radio blasting strange music at weird hours and having to wake […]
In Which I Leave the Bedside
I’m twenty years old, working as a G.N. (graduate nurse), still waiting to find out if I passed my boards. It’s 3 p.m., and I come on duty to discover I’m in charge of all the intensive care patients. I have two regularly-scheduled nurse’s aides and one practical nurse who’s never worked on this […]
Five Minute Friday: In Which She is Afraid to Say Hello
We’re on the way to school, and I tell Grace how Great-Grandpa is home and can’t drive and is lonesome since Great-Grandma died. I tell her how he likes us to call, to hear our voices. “I don’t know if he’ll be up yet,” I say, “but let’s try.” He answers on the second […]
