This dinner is not great. Though I like to think of myself as a decent cook, the reality is that ingredients are capricious, and I’m even more capricious about following recipes. Sometimes I do, measuring with almost-precision and using almost all of the right ingredients. On occasion, when I’m learning to do something new, I glance…
Author: Kristi
Teacher. Writer. Traveler. Learning to see God everywhere.
Dream Job
Future Math Teacher meets me in my office after school. She and a partner are cooking dinner for Timmy and me tonight, a project for their Independent Living (once called “Home Economics”) class. From here, we’re going to shop for the evening at both of Kandern’s grocery stores, then home so that they can prepare the…
A Novel Month
I told only a few people I was attempting it. And I always said “attempting,” as if this was word was a magic talisman to ward off any accusation of failure. Usually I am all bravado at the beginning of adventures. I’ll declare them, like a European explorer, then push my ship off into the…
From the Woods of Narnia
5:oo PM on Saturday evening, the sun is down over the leafless Black Forest as we scurry between table s and up on the stage, putting the finishing touches on the decorations for this year’s Christmas Banquet. The theme is “Through The Wardrobe,” an homage to C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, and…
Rewrites
“So, what’s up with this paper?” my students ask, wafting in from the hall and settling in their desks with a nonchalance only possible after lunch, when a free afternoon beckons and “we can only handle school if it’s relaxed” is the motto of the hour. Don’t ask too much of us; it’s sixth period….
Leaving The Woods
“Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand… Our life is like a German Confederacy, made up of petty states, with its boundary forever fluctuating, so that even a German cannot tell you how it is bounded at any moment.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden…
Only If
I wasn’t going to lead a small group this year. I remember this Thursday night, as I climb the stairs of one of my senior small group girls’ homes, ready to partake in the birthday feast that the girls have prepared for me and my co-leader, Allison, whose birthday is one day before mine. Earlier…
Töpfer
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.” Ephesians 3:20-21 It starts to rain on Sunday afternoon, as we…
Of Prayer {From A Puddle of Yogurt}
“Do you know what this means?” He pushes his workbook over to where I’m sitting on a couch in Maugenhard’s living room. I’ve helped set up an ice cream sundae bar tonight, and made a blueberry coffee cake now in the refrigerator, ready for Maug’s dorm mom to toss in the oven tomorrow morning. Now…
On Time
Time, the brunt of many metaphors. Time is money. Time is a father or a ghoul. Time flies and crawls, always when you’d rather he doesn’t. School began today at Black Forest Academy, with the same flag-bearing pageantry that’s brought tears to my eyes for each of the last four years. This time, my fifth, was…
The Way Home 