cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
Most of the good things in my life have felt like they didn’t come on time. My friends praised God when they got the text that I came out of anaphylactic shock in the ER as a nurse gave me a shot of epinephrine for an allergy I suddenly discovered I had in my thirties.…
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“Safe? Who said anything about safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the king, I tell you.” – Mr. Beaver* My favorite grocery store is five miles east of my home, down a two-lane highway in the middle of a forest preserve. Forest preserves are Illinois’s excuse for nature. No buildings are allowed…
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I have a memory of belonging, of feeling at home.
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I’m on the hunt for a church community. I can’t in good conscience identify church as a need anymore. Just shy of two years into this pandemic and I recognize that learning, worshiping, seeking justice, and building community with the same group of people, and then weathering disagreements with those people with grace isn’t something…
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“For the opposite of clinging is not letting go but cherishing. This is the goal of the practice of humility. That having a “light grasp” on life prepares the way for cherishing what is right in front of us.” ― Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, Gregory Boyle Dear Colleague, This year,…
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When I was 10, I went to my parents separately and asked them if they ever doubted God’s existence. “No, never” was the response. I don’t remember if there was much curiosity after that. If there was, the lack of shared questioning led me to shut down and sweep my doubt and unbelief quickly and…
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My heart felt heavy. My lungs felt empty. My mind couldn’t form a coherent thought. The loss was more than I had ever known. The hurt resonated deep within my soul.
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It was dinnertime on a Sunday, which means the countdown to bedtime had started a little early and was slightly more enthusiastic than normal. I had been craving cauliflower for a while, which isn’t something I’m particularly proud of, but here we were. My husband and two daughters looked on as I picked up the…
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It may be that when we no longer know what to do we have come to our real work, and that when we no longer know which way to go we have come to our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings. –Wendell…
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I grew up in the paradox of an abusive Christian home. It’s a surprise, then, that my siblings and I each clung to Jesus in our own ways. We were desperate for stability and truth. When I became a mother, I reinvented the parenting wheel. I prayed for inspiration, for wisdom, for the ability to…
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