I Stand in This Breath of My Life

I am alive. I’m trying to let that sink in. I inherited the unfinished sketchbook of a beloved art professor who passed away last spring. Flipping through the pages this morning, I see how alike we are in our interactions with the blank pages–line drawings, quotation marks surrounding deep theological ideas and questions, to-do lists,…

Being There (On the Shores of Life and Loss)

A week ago we cried over the body of my beloved Mother.  She is gone.  This keeps hitting me like ocean waves, one after the other. How it swells.  How it breaks.   It all seems like a dream.  The next day was of course a birthday.  My daughter’s third. The only time to cry was…

This Morning I Sat Down at the Table With My 22-Year Old Self

This morning I sat down at the table with my 22-year old self.  She drank ginger peach black tea with cream and sugar.  I drank darjeeling, black.  We met in a cafe, the kind with classical music and the pleasant hum of conversation in the background.  The people sitting next to us wondered if we…

Living Conversation

I love words.  They are not perfect, because they aren’t really the things themselves:  the word “chicken” is not a chicken, it is just some scribbled lines on paper.  The word “angry” is not an emotion, it is just a symbol for the feeling.  The word “fragrant” is not the actual smell of gardenias, it…

Waking up to the Miracle

I had an amazing experience this week.  It is hard for me to tell about it, because I had to look into the face of suffering to see it.  But I want to tell it.  I have to tell it.  I am bursting to tell it. On Monday, I went to visit my niece, Marti…