6 posts
The Christian scriptures do not have a clear teaching on the presence of our beloved animals in heaven, but they do describe it as a time when every tear is wiped from our eyes. I am not the first to wonder if for this to happen, the pets we love here must indeed make their way to us there in some form.
I went to sleep the Sunday after the Seahawks beat the Rams, winning a chance to redo / undo the 2015 Super Bowl loss to the Patriots, buzzing with this essay idea. Football was the white noise of my childhood, a place that felt safe. I thought about watching with my dad when I was ill. I remembered a special game we watched together weeks before he died. And I knew I wanted to do the work to get this into the world before the big game.
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...
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...
The turning of the seasons, and in particular, the hidden richness in the fallow winter season, have long been of special interest to me. When I lived in Brooklyn, I loved walking through the Botanic Garden in the dead months, hunting for the smallest signs of transformation. A bud months away from blossoms just starting...
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...