An Experienced Novice

It’s hotter in Texas than we’d like. When we unfold ourselves from inside the narrow tube of the three-hour “express” from Norfolk, Virginia to Houston, we step onto the warm runway and breathe in the foreign, humid scent of February in the Lone Star State. Three flights down, one to go. Living overseas, Timmy and I…

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Better and Better

Ceramics Teacher and I were sitting on the counter at Maugenhard boys’ dorm, almost a year ago, two off-duty teachers waiting for cookies to bake and chatting with the dorm mom. We were pregnant, Ceramics Teacher a few months more than I, both excited and a bit skeptical of babies. Along with being the caregiver for twenty-ish…

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Choosing Morning

Bless the Lord, O my soul,     and all that is within me,     bless his holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul,     and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity,     who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit,     who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good     so that your youth is…

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How The Storm Tried To Steal Christmas

I’ve been trying to get around to writing about our candlelit Christmas for a bit now. Oddly, it’s not easy to set aside time for writing (or even thinking, sometimes), with a wriggly six-week-old as a loud and pleasant constant companion. I’m tempted to write in metaphor, some bit about light and darkness that would be…

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Miraculous & Mundane

No matter how far along our spiritual pilgrimage we may have come, we need to be shown time after time that humble ordinary things can be very holy, very full of God. We may hope for vision and revelations and wonderful experiences, forgetting that the context of the revelation of God to each one of…

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Hands and Voices

After the months of his pursuit of her, now they meet face to face. From the beginnings of the world his arrival and her welcome have been prepared. They have always known each other. Wendell Berry, from “Her First Calf” Needle-sharp stars in a black-ice sky. Snow crunching underfoot, clinging to branches that glow grey…

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Candles and Community

The house is cold at dawn. I wake and build the fires. The ground is white with snow. from “IV,” Wendell Berry On the night our daughter is supposed to be born (the “supposed to” determined by an oh-so-precise countdown that started way back in February), we have no electricity at Snoqualmie Pass. We’re actually more than…

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Weight, Wait

I’m a riddle in nine syllables, An elephant, a ponderous house, A melon strolling on two tendrils. from “Metaphors,” Sylvia Plath It’s one of those poems that I have almost memorized by accident, Plath’s “Metaphors,” a “riddle in nine syllables” I’ve set to many classes of eleventh graders. “What is she talking about?” I’ll ask them,…

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Halloween, 2011. On a clear and frigid evening in the city, we’d walked from the newer shopping district of Klein Basel across the Rhein River, and up narrow, cobblestoned streets to ancient Groß Basel, looking medieval with its cathedrals and leering timbered houses. At the top of the hill, in comical contrast to the severe flying…

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National Forest & Black Forest {Or, Where You’re From}

Dear Luci, John Denver plays over the stereo. The morning fire is down to embers now, and through the upstairs window all I can see are the dark arms of fir trees, calm and complacent in the autumn sun. On the counter sits a bear made of yellow cake, waiting for frosting, because tomorrow is…

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