Back a while ago — when the girls were young, and I was in one of my desperate seasons — I consulted my first spiritual director. She was someone I was friendly with at church, who had recently decided to add this skill to her capacious repertoire. I was early on in my journey into […]
So I’m drinking my second cup of coffee and reading Twitter, as one does, and I wander into a thread on the morality of the death penalty. Not very far, just far enough to see some “teacher” qualities and some “Christian” qualities (go algorithms!) and to notice someone asking the original poster whether they think […]
“Nobody is born ahead of their time!” —Hannah Gadsby, from the one-person show Nanette Gadsby exclaims this at the crux of her thorough discussion of Vincent Van Gogh’s stylistic and thematic choices. She’s reacting to a commonly-repeated thought: that, during his life, Van Gogh’s work wasn’t collected widely or financially rewarded because his ideas (as […]
A little while ago my spiritual director asked me to cast my mind/heart across the Bible and tell her what ‘rhyme’ came to me as I considered myself in the moment. (She uses ‘rhyme’ here to refer to passages that strike one as similar, without needing to be a full match.) I thought: Second Isaiah’s […]
Well, the aligners arrived later than expected — I just got them Wednesday. One effect of contemporary computer imaging and computer modeling is: the simulation says my lower teeth won’t all fit in my mouth together. Or maybe the simulation takes into account that the jaw in its 50s is likely less accommodating than the […]
My English-major work happened a long time ago now, but it — and the literature-learning culture that surrounded it and me — taught me the glories of coming to a bit of writing with no (or few) expectations: read what’s in front of you, listen inside yourself for what chimes or clunks, jot that down. […]
My evening ritual is as bare-bones as I can make it.Some of this is because, at my core, I am a morning person. The shape of my evenings?There’s the two-level go-to-bed alarm — even at my weary end of the day I have a tendency to hyperfocus — that sends me off to the back […]
Things I thought I would buy once: medical procedure masksWe bought one 10-pack, a second… a 20-pack by accident… — which I assumed would mostly collect dust. We’re down to perhaps 10, this because we mostly have used washable masks with disposable filters. They’re our “keep in the car just in case” masks. alcohol wipes, […]
YHWH said to Moses: Speak to the Israelites and say to them: Make fringes on the edges of your clothing for all time. Have them put blue cords on the fringe on the edges. This will be your fringe. You will see it and remember all the YHWH’s commands and do them. Then you won’t […]
Now the angel of YHWH came and sat under the oak at Ophrah, which belonged to Joash the Abiezrite, as his son Gideon was beating out wheat in the wine press, to hide it (kds: and himself?) from the Midianites. … Then YHWH turned to him and said, “Go in this might of yours and […]
