With Open Hands With open hands, I bring my prayers, my questions, my people, my anxious fears, my happy tears,my gratitude spilling over,my laughter and love.I offer it to You,a sacrifice,my soul sings of doubt and despair, of delight and dancing. With open hands, I step into your embrace,Enveloped in the lavender scent of love […]
Meeting Myself for Coffee
Morning beckons.We chat.My good farmer man and I. He tells me about the status of parts we’re still awaiting for our John Deere tractor, that’s torn apart, over in the machine shop. Coffee begins to hiss, dripping in a cocoa brew from the paper filter where my farmer man has placed ground coffee beans and […]
Souldeep Symphony: Joy + Praise
“Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.” ~ G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy I watch the sweat bead along the turquoise tumbler. […]
On the Power of Distraction
Dust lays around my living room, but perhaps the beauty of blooms will distract from it. Fruitflies have managed to find their way indoors. The frantic buzz frustrates me. I find the leather swatter. I can’t abide flies in my house or my Yukon. They are one of life’s trials and annoyances. Even the audiobook […]
June Kaleidoscope
Kaleidoscope:Combined from three Greek words:kalos (καλός), meaning “beautiful,”eidos (εἶδος), meaning “shape,”and skopos (σκοπός), meaning either “watcher” or “thing looked at.”Kaleidoscope: beautiful shapes to look at,observer of beautiful forms.Kaleidoscope:constantly changing pattern,medley, mixture. Kaleidoscope living.An observer of beauty. Delighting in Details. Noticing shapes and nuances. Giving gratitude for aesthetics and texture.Our lives are stories.Our stories are a […]
On Toy Tractors, Pink Rugs, and Farming in Real Life
From across the field, this view from my living room windows – the ones in want of a good washing – often transports me to the land of toys and make-believe. From across the field, from my front porch – the one where random dog toys and chew ropes and two dogs sprawl – it […]
It’s Me. I’m His Child. It’s Me.
I tap pause.Spotify responds.My wish is its command. I ponder.Spotify waits silent.Quiet beneath my fingertips. Music lines repeat in my head.Resonance beats in my chest.I breathe deep. A haunting compilation of notes and words put flesh to feelings.Pluck at the heart of human experience. This is what great art does. It opens.Reveals.Bids deep reflection. I […]
Bring Your Puzzle Piece
If, fifteen months ago my fairy godmother would have appeared in a swirl of glitter and twinkle lights and announced to me that this March I would find myself in Bluefield, West Virginia in the company of a beautiful group of writers and creators at Hopewords Conference, I could not have been more incredulous, amazed, […]
The Long Sentence
“Slowing down, for a contemporary reader, is a counter-cultural act.” “Sentence means literally a way of thinking (Latin: sentential) comes from the Latin sentire, to feel” “The non-skimmable sentence with an undertow that carries us backward to reconsider almost as strongly as it moves us forward to learn more is a sentence which insists that, […]
Play is the Glitter of Life
“To play is to live in grace.” Marilyn McEntyre writes these words in the tenth chapter of her book Caring For Words in a Culture of Lies. A tenth chapter aptly titled ‘Play’. Before I read this line, I’ve uncapped my orange highlighter and with broad strokes colored every letter and punctuation mark in this prior […]
In Need of Rescue
I navigate my shopping cart to a halt beside the tortilla chips. Today I’m choosy and I specifically search for On The Border brand. The Fiesta Dippin’ chips style is in easy grasp.I snag two bags, tumbling them among other assorted groceries in my cart. I’d really prefer to have the Cafe style as well. They hover two shelves above my head and are […]
The King Always Returns
In these days of shadow and light, evening dusk, sunshine bright, in these days where glad tidings collide with messiness and brokenness inside, in these days of reflection and deflection, noticing the intersection of past, present, and future pondered, in these days of gazing at gathering dust along the top tier of the Roman shade, […]
Because Love Works That Way
We wend our way through the show room.Keys shine, ivory gloss and polished ebony.They urge fingertips to sweep across them. The ambience of the room casts a spell, makes believe that all one would need to do is begin to play with a flourish and concert pianist music would flow forth. But I know better. […]
Light Always Pierces Darkness
Palpitating. Pounding. Penetrating.Creeping. Crawling. Corrupting.Foreboding.Disturbed. Dismayed. Discombobulated.Anxious. Agitated. Apprehensive.Troubled. Snaking around and under and through.Shrouding everything it encounters.Sinister limbs lurch and reach.Fear pounds in brave chestsAnd courage claws surfaceward.Breath breaks in scant bursts. It wears oppressive doom as an accessory.A snarl, menace, sneer as make-up.Shadows as eyeshadow to overshadow.Spines tremble. We cringe. Hearts falter.Souls shudder and […]
We Are Messengers
Our in-the-flesh experience begins suddenly. The world opens to us bright and cold and startling. We wail and blink, stunned by the suddenness, the shifting from warmth and comfort of a watery womb to an overstimulating awareness and newness. Lungs gasp air and breath pumps in, out, in, out. Legs and arms thrash and pump […]
Breathing Life
What breathes life into you? What offers an exhale of refreshing? Who do you breathe easier around? Here’s one of mine: Spring of 2022 brought the formation of a Book Club Society into my life. It’s been one of my very favorite parts of this year. Life-giving + breathing joy in + delight = a […]