adoption

Rooted in Light

The road from courage and hope, to utter despair, and then finally to exhilaration stretched through wild lands in 2005. With the daughter we longed to adopt buried in a third-world orphanage and silence from the Kenyan lawyer who should be inviting us to come and claim her, I could no longer bear the separation.…Read more Rooted in Light

Prophetic Art

“Art is the language of the soul.” With these words, one of my lifelong friends exhorted me as I wrestled for years with an insatiable need to express myself visually. For decades I tried to suppress this language, feeling it could not urgently or adequately address the evils I witnessed in the world. It felt…Read more Prophetic Art

Just to Touch the Hem

Nairobi, June 2005 She refused to eat. Her forehead felt warm. She cried incessantly. Nothing alleviated her discomfort. As a sojourning foreigner, I lacked even the name of a pediatrician in Kenya, much less contact information. Even if I knew who to call, I couldn’t easily access transport. My one solace – I knew that…Read more Just to Touch the Hem

Abide

I feel a bit like a schizophrenic root system. The contents of my week seem jumbled and chaotic, too many off-shoots to identify a specific direction. I am deep in the soil of life, a tangle of kinked and knotted roots. I have no idea what is emerging above-ground. I remember another time I pressed…Read more Abide

Freedom Sunday

During a raid two months ago in India, rescuers invaded a room crowded with 36 women enslaved in the sex industry. Within moments of entering, they heard strange noises just on the other side of a wall. They searched for an opening, but there were no windows or doors. Finally they tore down a section…Read more Freedom Sunday

Let It Be Me – Response to Terrorism in Kenya

Horror still clutches my heart like an apparition from beyond the grave. “It is over,” Kenyan President Kenyatta assured the world on Tuesday. Some of the perpetrators are dead. Hopefully the rest are amongst eleven people detained in a sweep of Kenya’s exit points. And yet the echoes of their evil acts reverberate long after they…Read more Let It Be Me – Response to Terrorism in Kenya

Offering – Pondering the Lives of Mother Teresa Sisters

Kenya, 2001 (somewhere near Nairobi's second largest slum) Blinking in the transition from blazing equatorial sunlight to sacred shadows, we hesitate in the foyer. The sanctuary stretches before us, an ordination service for new Sisters already in progress. Rows of simple benches packed to capacity march along concrete floors. I spot an open space in…Read more Offering – Pondering the Lives of Mother Teresa Sisters

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