How To Swim in Symbolic Waters
In ancient times, the sea was the home of Chaos. I could write that the sea symbolized chaos, but that word symbol is too easily brushed aside. As if symbols are merely tame bits of literary frippery with no power to unleash the deepest truths of our lives. Like opening the floodgates. To the sea. For these ancients, the sea was unfathomable....
Reunion Days
I've written about my extended family before. These are almost always stories of absence. The cousins we have yet to meet. The grandparents we too rarely hold. Family, for us, is always too much or too little. I am a foreigner to my own family, a stranger to my own mother's children. (Psalm 69:8). Our lives are stretched across too many time...
Grief in the Garden
We have quite successfully banished grief from our lives. Dying proceeds in hospitals. It leaves no lingering trace in the pristine spaces of our homes. Death is sometimes marked in an old-fashioned way. We do occasionally carve the same old stones. Though the ancient words requiescat in pace have been abbreviated and largely limited to...
Perfect
It is summer. Like the season itself, there is no ambiguity in this statement. It is a fact as plain and self-evident as the sun that now rises straight up to the top of the sky or the green tomatoes waiting on their vines. In one of those rare congruences, the academic calendar and the moon calendar and every kind of calendar we might consult...
This Is Not My Calling (But He Calls)
It is June, and I count my blessings. Vines dripping in snap peas. Bowl after bowl of strawberries. Lettuces grown so large, I cradle one leafy head like a toddler in my arms. And carrots. I’ve never had much luck with carrots, but, this year, carrot tops are waving in the breeze like a dense fern forest. And these are not my only blessings....
These Farmhouse Bookshelves: Dreams in Alphabetical Order
I've heard it said that one's priorities are best observed through the lens of a checkbook register (or credit card statement or budget spreadsheet). Where your money goes, there goes your heart. I don't actually speak the language of priorities or goals or budgets (and the spreadsheets they tend to associate with), but I know just a bit about...