Early Monday morning on the run, I feel it full, the gnawing hunger growing in my fasted body, my stomach only a pleasing kind of empty; the gnawing hunger growing in my slowed mind, like shadows licking at the edges, making everything dim with an alarming sense of lack. Hungry, but hungry for…what? My body […]

They call him their Adam, these souls walking through the doors into the gathering place where Adam usually stands to welcome them on their way into worship, and, finding his spot blank because he has left his post for a moment, will miss him, will walk over to Kevin expressly to ask, where’s my man […]

Overnight, the snow fell, blanketing our back yard in pristine white, and as Kevin hands me a refill on my morning cup, steam curling and rising, I notice the new light has gone slightly rose, like the delicate petal of an opening flower.  I whisper a prayer that always rises in me when it snows, […]

In the early evening, my friends and I almost curl around a table scattered with puzzle pieces.  We gently share loose bits of our lives while we look for patterns of color and shape, our voices meandering lightly with our fingers, picking up topics and discarding them—laughter tinkling, or a sigh of concern drifting through […]

Some invitations take a while to receive, and this one had surely waited for me, the corner of an old letter just barely visible at the edge, below a stack of things desperate for sorting, until came the day when, all that clutter finally gone, I at last took it up in my hands and […]

I keep coming back to this, Adam quietly ferrying gifts out the front door, packing our cars the day we traveled to my parents’ house for our annual family Christmas, how he met me at the foot of the stairs again and again, accepting boxes and baskets from my hands with silent happiness even though […]

Out on the run in the early morning, the light barely an hour old, Kevin and I wake up to the day together, having just come awake again to God, our blank hands turned up, open and empty. For years, it’s been like this, the two of us sipping our coffee in the predawn, desperate […]

Before Christmas, I set aside a Friday afternoon to help Josh and Riley shop for their gifts, this a true highlight of the season for me because of the downright giddy generosity, the joy, with which they give, especially together, and every year, I finish the experience on a prayer: Lord, teach me to love […]

Three days I bake cookies as big as my hand—golden, caramel-sugar sweet, studded with chocolate and candy, a palm-full of sweet for the kids we will love in our church, with our church, on the last Sunday before Christmas.  A fat stack of self-sealing bags imprinted with snowflakes, for the cookies, sits on the bar […]

It is positively cold, the Advent night glittering, but we have come out anyway, following the light, looking for a glimpse of glory. Our dear friends and their tiny family huddle in a plywood sleigh, all pink cheeked and swathed in blankets and pom-pom hats, and only because the Lord is within me and everything […]