Essays
Reading Micah While the World Burns
This past summer some women from church decided to gather on Wednesday evenings to read Scripture. We rotated hosting responsibilities and, after the initial chit-chat and snack table perusal, settled into backyard lawn chairs to read a chapter aloud from the book of Micah. Yes, that Micah. The Biblical minor prophet, the “do justly, love…
READ MOREThe Mystery of Love Persisting
I can still feel the waves of nausea that began to hit my stomach when I heard the news. My whole world was turning upside down, and I had no way to stop it. The voices in my head were swirling around like a plastic bag being blown by a cyclone. I was about to…
READ MOREThe Rising Fire Within Us
It wasn’t only in the dark, when the lights were out and my thoughts had a tendency to expand and disparage themselves. It wasn’t only when the baby needed nursing at 2:00 a.m. and the street lights shone brightly across the street over our neighbor’s silver maple. It wasn’t only when I had to repeat…
READ MORELove’s Mystery Deeper Than Memory
Bundled against the freezing weather, I pushed the stroller down the sidewalk. Baby napping inside, coffee in hand, a book balanced on the bar, and the big kids off on a bike ride with Jeff. This little routine had become a beloved ritual in the chaos and isolation of quarantine. But today was different. The…
READ MOREReaching Through Time and Space: Generational Healing as a Mixed Native Mother
“If you’re really Native, how do you plug in your computer?” It was a question I was asked at the age of eight by another kid at summer camp. She meant it sincerely. She was struggling to reconcile her concept of Native people as teepee-dwelling museum pieces with the light-skinned kid in front of her.…
READ MORECarrying Our Homes
She bounds down the concrete steps in her almost-two-year-old glory: wearing a backward t-shirt with the tag jutting out below her chin and a bright pink tutu over her pants. Her ponytail has migrated to the side of her head, sprouting like a horizontal palm tree. Thanks to the unsolicited comment from a neighbor tinkering…
READ MOREAs A Mother Comforts Her Child
I was not excited when I found out I was pregnant. In fact, I remember staring at the five pregnancy tests in our tiny apartment in Texas trying very unsuccessfully to not fall in a panic attack. All I could think as I saw that plus sign in front of me was, “I can’t do…
READ MOREThis Is Why We Give Thanks
“One act of thanksgiving made when things go wrong is worth a thousand when things go well.” (St. John of Avila) My children’s favorite grace before meals is—(ducks and blushes from theological embarrassment)—the Johnny Appleseed song. Oh, the Lord’s been good to me / And so I thank the Lord For giving me / The things…
READ MOREcan these bones live?
He said to me, “Mortal, can these bones live?” I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” (Ezekiel 37:3) I miss your writing, she texts me. So I went back and read a bunch of the old stuff. I miss it, too, I write back. The next day another friend listens. (My latest litany of lament.) “So…
READ MOREWhen You Do Not Want To Give Thanks
It’s been a hard month, hasn’t it? In our small corner, it was the shock of twins. The exhaustion of early pregnancy. The darkness of morning sickness. And the upheaving of expectations. But in the wider world, it was Paris and Beirut and Syria and so many million more places where the earth is broken and…
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