hope

Free Indeed

Red patterned light trickles across black curtains. A fanciful bouquet erupts on stage right: black-and-white-striped poles adorned with pink sparkly netting, fuzzy green puffs dripping with silver strands, orange tufts dotted with pink. Green cardboard-cut-out leaves ground the arrangement. Expectant silence swells as the curtain draws. Lilting music evokes the changing moods of “My Many…Read more Free Indeed

Songs in the Valley

“It doesn’t look as bad as it did yesterday,” my ever-honest 12 year old tried to encourage me. I asked my husband, “Is it really bad?” “I like some of your other pieces better,” he conceded. I gave it one last look, and shredded it. Every piece of artwork, for me, seems to pass through…Read more Songs in the Valley

Trees

As a kid growing up in Black Forest, trees were my favorite place to while away a summer day: scent of pine, sticky sap, whispering wind, choosing the next limb to climb ever higher, a quiet kingdom of my very own. Still at points of stress, I like to think about trees. Something about their…Read more Trees

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

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

Scintilla

All around us is scintilla of God's Presence. Writing for me is a path of noticing, of being present to traces of glory... Word Origin & History scintilla 1692, from fig. use of L. scintilla  "particle of fire, spark, glittering speck, atom," probably from PIE *ski-nto-,  from base *skai-  "to shine, to gleam" (cf. Goth. skeinan,…Read more Scintilla