- It Does Not Force its Sap; Ripening Like the Tree I have been driving around Pasadena this last week with a vague echo in my mind of this excerpt. It’s uncanny how I’ve heard this phrase over and again: “She does not force her sap in summer.” It took me quite a while to realize that the phrase was from Rilke. It almost felt […]
- A Psalm of Nelly Today in my 11am class on The Spiritual Disciplines we were given 8 minutes to write a Psalm. We’d been looking at Psalm 100, and I was particularly thinking about the final line of the song’s end: his faithfulness continues to all generations. I wear God’s faithfulness as a coat in the ice-march of an […]
- I Remember Discovering Salinger (as Pseudo Psalmist) I remember reading a red and worn Catcher in the Rye for the first time in undergrad, I think at Sarah Painter’s insistence. And I remember reading it again, and again, and then again, laughing aloud increasingly more with each turn. “Humor is every bit as noble as drama and just as honest. To sit […]
- I Remember Not Knowing Where My Feet Were Going Next And I played a handy game of calm trust –> freak out –> calm again –> really sizable freak out –> exhale. I found, quickly, that I was not really alone. The truth is, in spite of my animated freak attacks, there were plenty of families, strangers, and words. Each to each, they all enfolded […]
- day twenty-seven.
- day twenty-six. (for Mama.)
- [It’s Thanksgiving so] Name that Psalmy Tune I am thankful that God really likes good words and poetry and songs. I am thankful that the biggest book in the canon is a Songbook. I’m thankful for the mysterious way those Psalms have pulled me out of despair, so many times. I’m thankful that King David sang/shouted/asked such awful (and awfully honest) questions–like, […]
- Mobile upload. On train. (My favorite place to hide.) Do you know the number? It’s not twenty three.
- B-sides on Time – Take 3 I recently spent some time visiting a young woman in a hospital bed. She’d gone into labor with her first child and delivered a still-born boy. I was at a loss for words. So was she. I just tried to stand there in the sadness with her and the father, resisting the temptation to leave […]
- Hands Falling In the moment when we hear horrific news, the hands seem to fall off the clock. Everything that seemed important stops. In those moments I’ve often chosen to turn my eyes away with a conciliatory “oh that’s awful,” in order to hastily get the clock working again. As if to say, “things must keep moving.” […]
- Sunset Over Baltimore
- Grazie, Tino; 107 The sun is setting on another American Thanksgiving. The infamous “Black Friday” is approaching. (For all of our dear non-American friends, tomorrow is the day in the States when hoards of shopper-bugs descend on shopping malls and stores to get the most tasty Christmas sales. Some even camp out on the streets in the bitter […]