thousands of feet in the air

The older I get, the more tiring persistent machine noise has become. Noise-cancelling headphones may be privileged as all get-out… and I’m glad I now have them. The Bluetooth keyboard is also a major win. Though a couple of the keys occasionally have to be re-seated, and I’m on my way to wearing the “n” […]

speak now

Bundling up my laptop and boxing my books (they’re too heavy for a backpack), I mentally sluice the class I just finished back over me. It’s my usual habit; an impressionistic review that may or may not anchor the contents better in my head. What I notice this time is a dynamic at the outset […]

picking up the weaving

Seriously, any time I’m working on a piece of writing—particularly school-writing—I feel as if I’m resuming a hand-weaving project after setting it aside for a while. Like this, …I gather up the strands, pull the pattern back into the front of my mind, and start again. With any luck, I’m accurate in how I get […]

fives fix the system

M. and I got dinner together last night. It was a late meal for both of us—M tried to order off the happy-hour menu and was startled to hear that, at 7:15pm, that was no longer in play—and we were both life-tired enough that we were even more diffuse than usual. So I can’t tell […]

unedifying

I arrived at school 30 minutes before my class this morning. I had an errand to run at 7:15am (which never happens), finished early, and just headed in. This meant I closed myself in the ground-floor bathroom for 20 minutes, thinking nothing in particular. It was excellent. It seems an especially American obsession/anxiety: to show […]

radical congruence

This morning, we were working through, “[L]et’s not love with words or speech but with action and truth” (1 John 3:18, CEB). One of the related parts of this turns out to be congruence—that is, having your outsides match your virtuous (or faith-filled) intentions and plans. Which then put me in mind of one of […]

mortal kenosis

“At the center of the Christ hymn is the notion of kenosis (self-emptying, self-restriction), an extraordinary moral initiative that Jesus took to reconcile with humanity.” —https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/kingdom-and-kenosis-the-mind-of-christ-in-pauls-ethics/ As someone whose brain runs deeper, wider, and faster than most people’s, I’ve been practicing self-restriction for as long as I can remember. I’ve never thought of it as […]

aquifers of energy

When I cranked my ears open to listen to this morning’s clock-alarm, I thought: It’s like a well. A well that’s been drawn-from until there’s little left, and all we now can do is wait for the groundwater to seep back in. At breakfast, as I surveyed my day, I remembered that I’m either four […]

intended

(I reminded myself three times yesterday to post this. Evidently I was much sleepier yesterday than I am today. Which, frankly, makes a statement.) The desert and the dry land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom like the crocus. They will burst into bloom, and rejoice with joy and singing. They will […]