Last night, my niece, Elsie, showed me a picture of what her new baby brother or sister might look like in the womb. It is just nine weeks tiny, with black eyes and hands and feet poking their way outward. “The baby is the size of an olive,” Elsie said. I tried to imagine holding … Continue reading The Size of an Olive
Sitting across the coffee shop table from her, I cannot see the Spirit of God in her---just as I cannot see the wind that’s whipping up off the cold Missouri river this morning. I do not know where these January gales come from, or where they’ll lie down tonight. They’re sharp, cutting right through my … Continue reading Where the North Wind Blows
I read the Cape Cod Times during breakfast Monday morning, and the story was about a man who got swallowed by a humpback whale on June 11, 2021. He was lobster diving off Herring Cove Beach at 8 A.M. when something like a freight train hammered him and everything went black. He felt himself surging … Continue reading Lord of the Seas
Lila Joy was born at home a week ago, all healthy and ruddy and dark-headed. I went for a visit Tuesday afternoon, and she was curled near my sister in a patch of sunlight on the bed, not so swollen as she'd been fresh out of the womb. It had been dark then, and the … Continue reading Looking for Some Light
The Ozark Trail ambles down eastern Missouri, flanked by shortleaf pines and tracing the foothills, in places skipping over rocks and roots like a stony river. It’s a dream of mine to walk from its trailhead (just forty minutes from here) clear to the western edge of the Mark Twain National Forest— some 230 miles. … Continue reading Rocks Of Remembrance
On Saturday, I did three things respectively: I planted a fall crop of bibb lettuce and kale; I wrestled chicken wire to build a fence around the box; and then I wiped sweat from my neck and dared the squirrels and deer to have a go at it. For good measure, I also took clippings … Continue reading Dead Wood
The first few things I remember about our stretch of Chatham seashore last summer are the waters chopping and clapping against the rocks, the place where the gray sky touched the horizon, and the points of light that blinked there after dark--- lighthouses across the bay. I also remember how the seashore smelled like dead … Continue reading Death on the Shoreline
I looked for something that could fill me in 2021, but I came away with a handful of air more times than I care to recount, because as it turns out, I was looking in the wrong places. The answer, of course, was that Jesus should satisfy me, ultimately and deeply, like an everlasting draught … Continue reading A Handful
I spent the night in a forest once and filtered my water from between two rocks, where a stream got caught and pulled through, bubbling up on the other side. It was just the place to rinse my fingers or fill my bottle. Streams flow down, and we use that phrase for grace too, because … Continue reading Grace that Roars
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