January 28, 2022 I’ve got lilies and birds in my own front yard.I didn’t put them there,I don’t keep them there.As they are fed and watered through the natural course of things– a nature put in place deliberately, so Jesus told us, by God’s own self,So I do nothing to deserve their beauty, their symbolism–there is just delight at the cosmic joke,of placing in...
January 9, 2022 The rain feels fat and semi-solid, like snow that has only just melted moments before landfall. We’re holed up indoors, except for one intrepid trip down treacherously compacted-snow-covered back stairs: time to put the Christmas decorations away, now that we’re in Epiphany; time to empty a week and a half of frozen compost that’s been sitting outside, covered in snow; time to...
January 7, 2022 My spiritual director tells me she thinks God is inviting me to make a cake. At the end of our session, we sit in silence together. You think that sounds awkward, try sitting in silence with someone over Zoom. But it doesn’t feel awkward to me, it feels like a reprieve: permission to stop taking care of people, to pause the inner swirl of problem-solving and risk-mitigating and...
January 1, 2022 I feel a pang of guilt every time I go out to the back yard. There’s always something ugly about it, something ragged, overgrown, in need of tidying. There’s almost always something growing too; the rate at which growing things outpace my available time is part of the problem. There’s always more work to be done than I can do. I will always leave some part of the garden...