scouring wind

At that time it will be said to this people and to Jerusalem: A hot wind comes from me out of the bare heights in the desert toward my poor people, not to winnow or cleanse— a wind too strong for that. Now it is I who speak in judgment against them. — Jeremiah 4:11-12 […]

let the circle be unbroken

Or, in this case, the streak: I’ve sent two more poetry submissions out into the world, so September is covered. October 2013 began the run—this makes five years of sending something forth each and every month. (Trivia: one of the places I submitted to this time, I submitted to on precisely the same day last […]

I know the shoe rules

…the hat rules, and what changes at Easter and Memorial Day. Not to mention seersucker season, when to use my silver bouillon spoons, and what a “Francis the first girl” is like. I own the Southern Belle Primer and its sequel. My married-person notecards are engraved instead of using thermography. And yet I’ve never seen […]

foodways in my free time

My 27-year-old self would’ve thought that, by now, I would not be startled when I have weeks like this. Weeks when the deadlines of my “other things” all crowd around into a single span, shoving my “real things” under the bed and into hampers. Yet here I am, startled to not finish yesterday’s post before […]

reconcile, at one

It’s still Yom Kippur, until well after sunset. So I’m still thinking about the practice of “settling accounts” for a year’s behavior. Y’know, like small businesses (and once-upon-a-time households) routinely go through their expenses and their money coming in, making sure everything lines up and the amount the bank says is there and the amount […]

day of goodness

גמר חתימה טובה /gemar chatimah tovah/ a good final sealing (of the book of Life for the year) I don’t know the actual Hebrew words yet, but I’m getting pretty good at sounding things out. Kind of like the six-year-olds you know. H-OU-S, house. It’s the last day of the Jewish High Holy Days, the […]

heart-correctness

It’s been some years now since this moment of dismay. We — the usual crew of loving Scripture-wrestlers, cheerfully not just agreeing to disagree, but willing to hang on to each other’s different understandings alongside our own — were putting some passage through its paces. Somehow either the text or the gloss we were using […]

sabbath, like grace, not required

i want to sing a song worth singing, i’ll write an anthem worth repeating. […] i’ve spent my whole life searching desperately to find out that grace requires nothing of me. —“One,” Sleeping At Last More yardwork, more podcasts. Today’s included the exposition of Ryan O’Neal’s exquisitely detailed process in building the song “One,” which […]

reclaiming my time

At the end of my Wednesday workout, my trainer and I discussed how we would fit our Friday puzzle-pieces together. There’s an exercise component, which takes about an hour not counting cleanup, and there’s an assisted stretching component, which takes… well, however long it needs to and lately that’s been two and a half hours. […]

stays in motion

It’s 8:30am, and I’ve already taken about 900 steps. This is way more than I manage when I’m working at home… I only start to see these sorts of numbers when I’m formally working out—you know, taking steps on purpose. On Monday, as I tried to see whether I could set up the printer near […]