Home Again, but Not Really
The firstborn and I will be back in Chicago soon. Four days with the people and places we both love best. I feel an urge to write that we are going home, except that we aren’t. It isn’t only that we sold our Chicago apartment 18 months ago. It isn’t because we have no family there. We do have many friends, and they were our family for ten good...
A Poem For Your Monday
In my ideal Christian bookstore, the Jesus knick-knacks and the Amish romances would be pushed to a far corner. The coveted window display space would be filled with books like the collected poems of Czeslaw Milosz. I guess if I’m being perfectly honest, my ideal Christian bookstore would look exactly like my favorite independent bookstore in...
True Stories and Our Storyteller
With three talkative children at the table, the ship of dinner-time conversation is rarely steered by the adults in our house. Which is surprising given that the youngest is working with a somewhat limited vocabulary. To make up for this handicap, he frequently resorts to loudly repeating a single word with varying intonations. His vocabularly...
For the Tired Ones
If there is one word to describe most parents of young children, it is this: tired. However, the tiredness itself doesn’t always make sense. It isn’t always logical. For instance, there is this strange equation: I am less tired, less overwhelmed now with three children than I was with one (and my youngest has yet to learn to sleep all...
A Poem for Your Monday
This is the first (and best) of all refrigerator poetry. It reminds me that the line between the mess of everyday and the wholeness of art is sometimes very slight. And yet, there is a line. Transforming ordinary raw materials (a pigment, a word) is not as easy as it looks. If the raw material is depleted or broken, what then? Light...
Sacred Idleness
It's a mystery. One day (in a succession of many, many such days) you are a still and brackish puddle of water. No movement. Not much life. Then, something imperceptible happens. Perhaps, Someone breathes just a bit of Himself over the stillness? And the still puddle begins to trickle. It's no river, certainly, but there is just a hint of...