31Mar 11, 2016
Today, just a prayer, whispered, then fervid and carpet-muffled because that’s where I plant my nose. I can’t seem to bend low enough to accommodate the feel of Him. It’s a prayer I need, one I offer often in some garbled, half-torn way. But He knows all the parts, so I don’t have to remember them, […]
32Aug 22, 2014
Adam stands beside me and his voice climbs, higher and higher toward the sky, pushing, pressing, growing. Sing like never before, oh my soul. Like everyone else, Adam has different voices for different kinds of experience. This voice with which he sings is his voice for joy, for love, for comfort. It’s the same voice […]
33Jun 27, 2014
This auditorium has different lines than the one in which we usually worship. Pews make up the rows instead of the moveable interlocking chairs with which we’re so familiar, and something makes the room feel broad. The moment we push quietly in, there’s the impression of red velvet, though the seating arrangment feels spacious and […]
34Jan 17, 2014
Our living is a wandering…and a return home. We have lived the same story in vast repetition since the couple left the Garden, since they glimpsed the two trees for the last time, barely touching the leaves with their fingers as they passed. And since that time, when they believed for just a moment too […]
35Nov 22, 2013
Well okay, not just the holidays. I can’t ignore the resounding, soul-altering Comment: This is not just for now. We linger, just souls pouring, and in those moments, walls fall. The thunderous quake, the crashing of ugly pretense pushed down, is something I feel, something that shakes Heaven maybe, while here, our voices softly offer […]
36Oct 25, 2013
Twilight comes, and she’s a bright star, throwing light so stunning I can hardly look away. There’s a Hebrew word for praise, a primitive root, that also means to flash forth light, and since we arrived in the ampitheater and the music floated out and up, she has shone, spreading her fingers wide, offering up […]
37Aug 16, 2013
Sometimes my hurry seeps into the most precious places. Sometimes I carry it into eternal spaces, into my living resurrected, into holy things not made for hurry. Hurry is a temporal symptom. It is a physical distraction. Hurry is born of all that passes away. With a sigh, we lay our hands gently against our […]
38Jun 7, 2013
Sometimes for weeks on end, I feel empty and lost. Gone. I walk around like a shell of myself, dreading the things I have to do, wishing away the moments, missing the gifts. I chew on my own tongue, finding it hard to say the healing things. There’s this space, a gulf yawning wide between […]
39Dec 28, 2012
We gather, curling into chairs and each other, a half-moon twice bonded by blood—blood in our veins and scarlet-robed in Christ. There’s something important about this—the gathering. Living, we circle each other as satellites, moving in and away, making different bright constellations. But in these moments of worship, we are all here, all present, all […]
40Sep 2, 2011
My baby girl is all brand new, a butterfly free from a soul’s cocooning. She felt it, and we did too. The acknowledgement of it glistened in her eyes as she looked at her dad, and then at me, water dripping from wet fingers. On Sunday morning, we’d been discussing Nehemiah chapter 8 over breakfast—why […]