“I think I know you,” I say, fumbling only a little because I don’t know if she’ll remember me at first, because the last time I saw her, we stood in worship singing blessings over each other. It was dark; we were masked, but I recognized her that night even though I didn’t know her […]

My friend gives me the cross as a gift, just lays it in my palm, and it isn’t until that filling, the cool, solid weight of olive wood resting against my skin, that I realize how empty-handed I’ve been. “I found these online,” she says, giving one to another friend too, because together, we make […]

Some say these are dark times. Winter breathes frosty paralysis in beautiful, sparkling gusts, and, especially because of the bare chill, the cloud-blanketed skies, I want to stay inside. And yet, this time of year, I feel starved for light. I hang strings of white bulbs, twinkling, in every room. I flick on all the […]

The grass glitters with frost, twinkling Messiah-lights that will remain long after Christmas. Long after we have packed away our bulbs and vacuumed away all traces of the tree; after we, traveling on to January, have stopped announcing our King, all creation still will proclaim His praise in a language understood in every nation. I […]

Think about the places where you feel like you belong, the book urges, just like that, plain and simple on the page, and I think of my friends, who are reading this book with me, of their faces and our seasons of meeting together on a screen, of the wildly wonderful way God has assembled […]

In the morning, we friends gather on Zoom, collecting on a screen the way we once surrounded coffee shop tables, dropping handbags on the floor, dragging over extra chairs, only now new windows open into presence in front of us like blinking eyes, and here I sit at home with my wet-from-the-shower hair, and we […]

“So, how are you doing?” “You know how it is,” I say, standing on the front porch, squenching my bare toes against the rough concrete, six feet away from two friends who, like sisters, have loved me through years of scars and laughter. I have lines etched into my face from both the joy and […]

“You know those days when you wake up and you think, ‘I want to help someone today’? My friend says this casually, leaning into the phone like we’re sitting across the table.  She continues, as if our hearts beat the same. “Well, yesterday I woke up like that, so I got up, got dressed, got […]

We crowd around the table–the casual, marked up table with the glitter from Zoe’s elementary school project melted into the finish, the one so in need of a renewal our paper plates have begun to stick. I’ve talked about refinishing it, imagining the dust thrown off with vigorous sanding, the feel of that gritty paper […]

My hands lay open in my lap, palms turned up to receive whatever grace God loves to give, somewhere that should feel like home. I bend my head to rest, empty of expectation. This Sunday, round tables replace the rows. Today, we actually worship together; we actually commune. It feels like wandering into a sprawling […]