cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
I sat down to write, opening my Pages program and automatically formatting the first page to center the words…”off center.” The words looked back at me, perfectly aligned, and I chuckled to myself. “How is this like my life?” We used to ask each other that question in a women’s group, and it often sparked an “aha”…
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These words sound otherworldly, carrying the sense of the sacred. Many of us were raised in traditions which include the eucharist, or communion. Some folks enter that space every month, some every week. For some, it is a shared table, some approach one by one, some wait for a plate to be passed, others wait…
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Tonight I watched the PBS documentary, Mr. Roger’s Won’t you be my neighbor? Seeing those familiar scenes brought up a swirl of feelings. I watched Mr. Rogers every day when I was a young girl growing up in Oregon. My world was in chaos, although no one at all knew. In the conservative tradition of…
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Why do we go back for our small selves? It is enough, is it not, to survive into adulthood? To go back means the risk of awakening desire. And desire is a powerfully dangerous thing. To desire is to be alive. I read a story over Christmas break, a novel written by a private investigator.…
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Brave On was a safe space for my heart to rest and to shift. Who knew there could be a place with (gasp) a bunch of Christian women that also carried the adjective “safe”?!
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Are you done yet? A girl sits at the table alone. Food long grown cold. Fourteen peas sit on her plate, one for each year. They look up at her, grey-green in all their pitiful canned mockery of a pea. “You can’t make me eat them.” And so she sat, caught in a war of…
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*Editorial note: This essay includes a story of pregnancy and loss tied to violence. The question of where I belong calls me first to my middle and high school days…such a wild time of life. I have three middle schoolers who tell me stories of belonging and stories of not belonging. However, sitting in the…
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The word “instigate” means “to bring about, as by incitement or urging; to urge on to some drastic or inadvisable action.” Sounds sinister, doesn’t it?
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There is a magical hour, when darkness lingers and daylight is yet an illusion. It is in this hour of endless night when babies like to be born.
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