Sometimes we finish the day in rags and mud, and the things we carry cover us like a tomb.  And it’s testimony to the Light in her that even though she’s afraid to be embarrassed, she says I can write about this, our walking through together. In my arms, she trembles.  “I just want to […]

“Would you like an elephant plant?” She asks, holding up a tiny plant in a square pot–terra cotta orange, but plastic—a baby that moments later I cannot find. I’m not sure it’s actually called an elephant plant, but it might be.  She’s not the best for remembering the names of things, and she lifts this […]

When we step onto the beach, the sea swells high and shimmers golden green in the sunlight.  A storm matures unseen somewhere off the coast, out over the great deep.  I know this, and still I cannot imagine how the water pools so high just here at the edge of the shore, why it gathers […]

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 […]

So maybe today–maybe in this—it’s time to press on, even though it’s hard, and it hurts, and you want to give up. “But I’m dying,” she says to me, gasping, sweat gathering like a halo along her hairline.  She’s waiting for me to say she can quit, but I am not so easily convinced. “You’re […]

In the middle of the afternoon, when the sun burns so hot we can almost see the scorching heat and the grass curls brown and crackles beneath our bare feet, we eat peaches that taste of sunshine.  The sticky juice runs down our chins.  We spoon up blueberries dripping with sweet milk and push out […]

She’s such a shining, starlit soul. She walks through the kitchen, where I gently lift lettuce leaves with my fingers, sorting the torn pieces into salad bowls. “Mom, what’s that?” She says, with a casual turn of her hand, a subtle gesture toward the line of butter yellow bowls. I know she doesn’t really mean, […]

Before the light splits apart the sky or steals soft through the clouds, revealing their lines, the only sound we hear is birdsong. I fold my legs up in the chair, drawing near to God, and it’s as though He wraps around me and breathes, Listen.  In the darkness, hidden from view, the birds sing […]

This always happens to me.  The thought settles hard, a bitter weed looking to root. Late afternoon, and I feel weary with trying.  We tumble out of the car like the dust we feel, and I am gripped by an overwhelming urge to lay in the grass and extend my arms and lose myself in the […]

It’s time to leave, so I stand at the bottom of the stairs and call to my son.  I hear his music, the fullness in the air that always colors the rooms where he moves, the strains of worship that make our living rich.  His feet thump against the carpet in an unseen stretch of […]