Caught up, as usual, in a morning flurry, I pause to hug Adam on my way out the door, to tell him I hope he enjoys his overnight field trip.  Most years, the staff at the school Adam attends arranges a stay in the lodge at a nearby park, where the school community does both […]

Up the hill and around the curve, our nonpartisan feet beat out a unified rhythm, our graying hair slipping out of knots and flying free of caps, my friends and I speaking of how, during the viciousness of election season, the rotten, tongue-flung mud has splattered us all.  Guiding one another by the direction of […]

“This is where your shoulders are actually supposed to rest,” my physical therapist says.  She has taken muscle and bone in capable hands and has literally rotated my shoulders back and down, holding them carefully in place as I lay, yielded, on her therapy table. “I’m sure it feels weird, though, because your muscles have […]

Here we sit, Josh’s mom–my friend Camille–and me, two sisters, on a velvet sofa in a coffee shop called Lucky Tree, twisting cups in our open hands, talking, as mothers do, of life-giving. Oddly, it strikes me that when we get up and leave this place, an impression of our bodies will remain, lightening the […]

This morning a verse that I’ll carry all day, like a go bag or, a staff that bears my weight and steadies my feet: Continue steadfastly in prayer, staying awake in it with thanksgiving. I sat on my parents’ back porch for a while just receiving provisions, grace, from God, sipping coffee while the day […]

Dear friend, our work is worship. My sister-friend, who forever speaks God’s words back to me, sends this text in the early morning, while the daylight is still new, as I rub my eyes and contemplate the day, the work, that I know God has planned well ahead of me. They are burnt offerings. By […]

It’s evening here, where our feet beat a path down a dizzying urban road that smells like sunbaked asphalt and motor oil and sweat, like jasmine perfume and donuts and bitter coffee, where stars blink on the buildings as well as in the sky, lighting the night an inky crimson black.  The intersections pulse with […]

On Saturday morning, we gather, rumpled and meandering, around the brunch table, where steam curls lazily over mugs of coffee and the fruit of God heaps in bowls, vibrant and kind, at the center.  We wear our pajamas and our morning hair, the lines on our faces from our pillows.  We savor our food and […]

So often we don’t need words; we need an embodiment of love.  We need compassion as a posture, protection like a shielding movement, one body curling over another. Let’s don’t just talk about love, the apostle John once wrote, let’s practice it. “You need to learn to pay attention to more than just the words […]

For me, recovery is the hardest part of sprinting. Watch beeps and I look down, silently counting how many more intervals I have yet to go on this run, because the part I dread isn’t the sprint itself but the breath-starved gulping that comes when the effort is over.  Resolved, I spring forward, legs and […]