December 21, 2024 This is the season where Christians worldwide commemorate a birth. But before the birth comes the waiting, the in-between season of Advent, a space for holding contradictions. Christ is coming, Christ has come. I love the contradictions. They don’t force a choice, don’t foreclose possibility. Is the world desperately broken or is there redemption? Am I hopeful or afraid? Is it...
April 15, 2024 We scoot down the neighborhood streets on our annual pilgrimage to the massive cherry tree from which are, generously, strung three swings. Opposite, someone has thoughtfully placed a bench for parents to sit and enjoy the scene. Every April these blossoms explode into magnificent pink pom poms, lush, fragile, effervescent. They are extravagant and short-lived, exploding from bare...
April 2, 2022 Basking underneath bare trees,Face kissed by the barest breeze,Gentle sunshine now descending:Winter isn’t never-ending.The leaves have not yet filled the sky,Not yet born, already die.I lay upon the almost greenAnd wait in spring’s sweet in-between. Written at Corhaven, Virginia. What if waiting wasn’t something to escape, but a season in its own right, a thing to...
March 5, 2022 The grip of cold is past,But not its gifts:The trees are sticks,The yard, still bare.Tufts of withered grass,Papery leaves, wind scattered,Whitewashed reeds,Seed pods: velvet husks, lone dried bean,Its time to sprout long past.The garden, gone.Beyond the fence, brown brush.Fallen branch.Amidst a mound of dirt Crowned with a sewage lid,A tiny creeping weed,Tendrils outstretched in...