“Dad, will you pray with me?” Those are the first words that register, disembodied in the darkness.  Those words, maybe six of the most powerful words there are, rouse me completely from thick sleep, even though she addresses her dad.  With my eyes closed, I can see her huddled down close to him, bare-kneed, wrapping […]

Morning breezes across the one knee I’ve drawn up to my chest, across the bare top of the other foot I push against the floor so the rocker will rock.  The messy bun on the back of my head bobs against weathered wood and woven reeds, and I find myself thankful for freedom, the freedom […]

For them, this was a game.  For me, this was a lesson in trust. “So, see, what you want to do is collect four queens from the middle,” Zoe says, gesturing expansively toward the center of the table.  “If you get the Rose Queen, that’s very good, because you can immediately draw an additional queen.” Adam […]

We gather to pray, our chairs pulled together in hasty circles.  The whole room echoes.  We make knots–so many weak-kneed, hungry children–tangling together to sort out the kinks in our hearts.  It strikes me sometimes, how our strongest posture can look from the outside like our weakest.  But see, there’s nothing stronger than being with […]

“What’s wrong?”  I stand at the bottom of the stairs with one foot propped on the nearest step waiting for her answer, counting the bits of things–bright sock fuzz, some kind of crumb–caught in the nap of that foot-worn carpet.  One more beat of silence and I’ll run up, one answer and I’ll bend down […]

I slide the last pin in place, just at the bottom of the glossy braid.  This one reminds me of a seashell, woven wide and spiraling low, bright at the top where the sun has turned her hair a tawny gold, like wheat.  She smiles and the light moves right into her face. “Thanks, Mom […]

I put a damp cloth in Adam’s hands and point toward the bathtub.  “Go ahead, wipe it clean, now.” “We don’t have to clean the bathroom,” he says to me, because he doesn’t like scrubbing bathtubs any more than most of the rest of us.  And that’s his new thing, as if life spins on […]

We wind our way along Pier 60 just as the sun dips, melting gold right into the ocean. I stand a moment and just breathe, watching the way the waves rise, wind-shaped right out of the glass sea. The pier is a flurry of activity as the city gears up for a festival on the […]

We run in that space just before the sunlight bursts new born, obliterating darkness; in that space where apart from the faithfulness of day, we’d not expect the arrival of Light at all. This is the parenthesis between rain showers, the tar-dark, murky stillness before another downpour, somehow carved for us like a silent pause. […]

I can hear him beside me and his voice is reverently light, soft and piercing.  But the thing is:  Adam never just sings.  He worships. We sit beneath the trees when the sun is soft and dying.  A breeze blows through–a Spirit-wind, and I hear him quietly crooning, oh the grace reaching out for me.  We’re […]