The Jesus of Prostitutes and the Purity Ball
A brief story about a Purity Ball in my Sunday newspaper catches my attention. There is an image (a church altar decked in lace like a bridal veil) and there are words spoken by a twelve-year-old girl (“I’m saving my purity for my husband”), and I feel troubled, as if there is a small pebble in my shoe. I don’t know why I am troubled. These...
The Language of a Gift
My children make lists for Santa (yes, already), and I peer over their shoulders considering the annual dilemma. Which is better, to receive just what you have asked for or to be surprised with the lovely yet utterly unexpected? In other words, the castle Lego set he spied at the big-box store or the box of fairytale Lego figures that I think...
A Poem for Your Monday
For you on this Monday: a sonnet from Irish farmer-turned-poet Patrick Kavanaugh. I suppose there are those who might find heresy in this poem. "Pantheism,” they would say. I don't defend the idea. If God is everything and everything is God then what good is God, I wonder? And yet, I do not think that this is a heresy strong enough to...
We Are a Beloved Community
On Friday, our weekly pizza-and-a-movie night had to be postponed (and, yes, for those of you wondering, I make two: one deliciously normal for four of us, one dairy-free, wheat-free and “pizza” in name only for the middle child). This middle child, our accident-prone five-year-old, had to be taken to the emergency room after a fall onto the...
On Being an Arm-chair Girl in a Motor-boat World
I recently bought a chair. To be more precise, I bought an arm-chair. This is no hard-backed dining chair. This is a reading chair, a tuck-in-by-the-window-with-a-stack-of-books-and-a-cup-of-tea-chair. Full confession: I already had a good reading chair. With its faded green-velvet slipcover, it is soft and welcoming. It even has a small hole...
A Poem for Your Monday
This poem is well suited to November's darker days. The changing of the clocks seems like an example of humanity's authority over its own environment, and yet it always reminds me just how out-of-our-control day and night, light and dark truly are. The days will grow shorter, no matter our efforts or anxieties. Nature will begin to die. We...