We’re packed up and on our way when he tells me about it. And it’s big. Life-changing big. Take-your-breath-away big. But this time I stay small and silent. And I listen. Do you know we use the same letters to build the words “silent” and “listen?” And it is this, this big thing, that […]
Playing Scattergories
Crumbs still clung to the harvest cloth between blotted Coke and orange juice. The fake decorations drooped a little when yawns gathered around to begin the traditional games. The eight-year-old asked to play Scattergories. The adults groaned knowing the difficulty she would have, fearing her frustration. But she persisted, and the adults relented. She took […]
Reclaimed and Repurposed
It’s been a long week. And so it’s midnight before I begin to stir chickpea flour into melted ghee, finely chop macadamia nuts and mix with coconut into peaked egg whites, form chocolate truffles and roll in chocolate sprinkles. While the rest of the house sleeps. Wash, mix, mold, bake, scrape, taste, lick. I’m making […]
Outside Inside
This is the penthouse. Where I do most of my study and writing these days. From here I can look out over yard and field and woods. It used to be my husband’s room. He remembers oven summers and freezer winters. He remembers lying on his bed and peeling away layers of wallpaper, vaguely remembers […]
Waiting in the Yard
In the end, this is the most hopeful thing any of us can say about spiritual transformation: I cannot transform myself, or anyone else for that matter. What I can do is create the conditions in which spiritual transformation can take place . . . ~Ruth Haley Barton (via God in the Yard, chapter 2, […]
Unwrapping Psalm 19:14
Gracee and I have started to read Little House on the Prairie. She wraps herself in her Princess pink blanket and curls up next to me. She reads a page, and then I read a page. And we talk about what we read. The enormous lake stretched flat and smooth and white all the way […]