cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
Decades ago, I was at the home of an older woman. She said, “My husband will be 70 this year, and we’ve started thinking about how to finish well.” This stuck with me, even though, at the time, I was comfortably middle-aged. This couple was well known in Christian circles. They had authored books and…
Read More
A long time ago, there was a prophet named Elisha, who had his bald head so far up into heaven that he was able to perform many miracles. This is not about him. He had a servant named Gehazi, who had his head so firmly fixed on this earth that he was shrewdly able to…
Read More
The Pilgrim’s Credo– I am not in control. I am not in a hurry. I walk in faith and hope. I greet everyone with peace. I bring back only what God gives me. –-Father Murray Bodo* I was raised in the Christian fundamentalist tradition, then happily transferred myself to the evangelical tradition (that is, very…
Read More
We were newlyweds, in our first apartment, performing the dreaded church-shopping. We visited nearby churches, each one similar to the ones I attended as a child. Pews, pianos, choirs. They were sparsely attended, and though it was obvious we were visitors, very few people greeted us. So we moved on. I had heard of a…
Read More
Downsizing. The word sounds sad…and old. I am like a hermit crab, looking for a new shell, but not a larger one—a smaller one, to fit my smaller life. Purging. I roam around my big house, tossing overboard the flotsam and jetsam of my previous life.
Read More
“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…
Read More
“The best protection any woman can have is courage.” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton 1. Initiation When I was in sixth grade, either God or genetics saw fit to gift me with the most developed body of any girl in the school. I didn’t think much about it, having the mind of a child, but I…
Read More
We bought the first puzzle near the beginning of the pandemic. We have never been a game-playing family; we’ve been cordially busy with our own individual interests. Then we bought a jigsaw puzzle. We waited weeks to receive the first one because of a COVID puzzle shortage. Of course.
Read More
I was a twenty-something, mindlessly folding church bulletins with a group of young women. We talked to pass the time. One of the women said, “I can’t wait until I’m forty. Your life is settled by then. It gets easier.” The fact that none of us laughed is a testament to our naïveté. Many years…
Read More
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…
Read More