Author: Fragments of Light

Healing

In my heart I keep a safety vault for fossils:  petrified wounds from the past. Bricks of self-protection mount an imposing barrier. As long as these hardened relics remain quarantined (even from myself), perhaps they can be kept from provoking further pain. But, what if there is another way?  What if these fossils could be…Read more Healing

Safe passage

Life is anything but safe. Its twists and turns leave me breathless, sometimes in wonder and sometimes in shock. “Is all of this going anywhere?” I am prone to ruminate in my weaker moments. But for all my own wrestling, my heart’s greatest vulnerability lies in watching my children tangle with the dangers of life, particularly…Read more Safe passage

Summoned

Lying flat out on my belly, face down in the sand: vulnerable, defenseless. Suddenly, out of nowhere, like Moses's burning bush, like Jacob’s ladder, the summons comes: terror and hope. Terrible hope. If I am wrong, I am just here in the dirt, more aware of it than ever. But anticipation is trembling like air…Read more Summoned

Smell of fear

You left me alone in the smell of fear. Thick haze smothers scorched earth; I can't see. The next scathing breath catches in my lungs. A child's swing lists lazily on this barren hilltop, beside a crumbling brick archway, framing blackened nothing.

Evenings in Australia

The sun hovered low over the desert, yielding to emerging star cascades. The Southern Cross, exotic- not visible at home, and easy to find, always anchored the night for me in that faraway place. We huddled on a blanket, humbled by the enormity of blazing galaxies unfolding without artificial light interference. Evening air brushed cool…Read more Evenings in Australia

My Dad’s Canoe

Shadowed land recedes. Oars undulate water, cadence of myriad droplets shift the expanse. How far? Where do the ripples cease in this expanse where we are the only catalyst? Wordless we settle the oars at our sides, lean back. All is still. Water tranquil as glass. Thick early morning clouds lean low like a lover…Read more My Dad’s Canoe

My beloved friend

Sept 30, 2011 I always thought of my Dad as the North Star, pointing me to what really matters in life. I could believe in a God who loved me unconditionally, tenderly, with joy, a God who delighted in me, because my Dad loved me that way. When I met David, I recognized him as…Read more My beloved friend

River Rock

A river rock remembers… morning dream glisten, afternoon sun-dapple drift, violent undertow plunge of night, rapid thrash and shatter, all is lost. A river rock sings of becoming - from jagged sediment to polished hope.

Yearning

Like pungent fields of rich crumbling fertility, naked to the noon day sun, aching to be steadied by clinging roots, we all of us live, move, search. I see these fields of upturned faces, groaning for miles and miles. And all the while the air is pulsing with something more real than hungry bellies, frigid…Read more Yearning

Held

I am battered, a bereft leaf loosed in murky mayhem, kicked up from frenzied heels Of moon and wind. No mooring remains in this, the last corkscrew hour before dawn. I am a burnished shadow, a swirling swan song to inky nihility. Falling. Suddenly! Madness slivered, snagged in the hem of earth’s evergreen garment, quivering…Read more Held