i went to a wedding last month. the church was in the middle of nowhere. mazzy and i drove miles and miles through fields of corn and vineyards. the western side of michigan has vineyards. rows and rows of grapes waiting to be turned into something else. or maybe not. maybe they’ll stay grapes. maybe
Categorywriting
writing lonely stories
writing is ministering, pastoring, chaplaincy. i come to you and trace my scars with a fingertip. i show you the map of me and at the same time you see that i’m healed up now, that i’m still here, that i’m okay. and so are you. for a long time, writing was a mirror. the
harry potter and true stories
we walked in a world created in one woman’s imagination. it was a real place. we heard languages from around the world spoken around, all of us lost in a shared reality that has come to mean so much to so many. we’d seen this place in our mind’s eye and now we were here.
the stories we tell
i ended up outside. sometimes early january is friendly to outside morning dwellers. this happens very rarely in michigan. i still almost don’t believe it. the water was still and the city was so quiet. i had to take a picture. i haven’t done this so much anymore. take pictures, write down my thoughts. i
building a platform
i started writing this blog with no end in mind. i’ve always written. ever since i was little and the blank, yellow page seemed safer than any other place. i’ve got thirty journals for people to burn after i die. then came the internet. i lived in a small town in ohio when i wrote
jesus died for you and other sentences that don’t mean anything
“i’ve heard so many teachings on why he had to die, but it never seems to stick in my head.” i’m looking out at the frozen neighborhood. sentences can freeze and crack, too. the meaning they once held is nowhere to be found. they are brittle, ready to snap. “the question of sin used to keep
hope and harry potter
He wanted it to be true. He read all seven books. He watched all eight movies. He needed Hogwarts to be so. He got his parents to take him to the train station in Chicago. It was the closest one to Detroit. But there weren’t any platforms. That didn’t stop him from running headlong into
what i’ll do instead
“the normal kids use these.” mazzy’s classmate says this to me. she says it in the music room. she says it without much thought because there is normal and then there is her – her friends, her class. i am kind of stunned and so i don’t say it quick like i should, the
in and of itself
i’m hoping to make a sacrifice, i’m hoping to make some time. distractions abound and i find myself racing towards them. thankful lists compiling activity and people fall short of the kind of gratitude i’m lacking as of late. but i’m not so sure i can pull it off. well then, how about a minute
ode to scott cairns’ ‘hesychasterion’
when i make our bed i will take a leafy branch and with it, smooth the sheets of softest green, down to wait until the day dims and we find one another again. when this daughter finds me writing in the shifting shadows on my morning porch, i ask her, “do you know you have