The Places We Are Pierced

“Wondering what it means to follow a God who points to his scars as a sign of resurrection.” – Antonia Terrazzas It is the Thomas part that they always harped on in Sunday school. Thomas, the guy who was doubting, the guy who didn’t believe. It was not the Jesus part, and it certainly wasn’t […]

Planting Ourselves in This Dirt

I spent the first eighteen months looking for signposts that life sprouts here in our new state. After a historically snowy winter last year in Michigan, I stalked trees for buds. I gently nudged snow from the neighbor’s crocuses with the toe of my boot, my soul hungry for a flowering something, anything that signified […]

Dead Stone Come to Life

When I think of resurrection, I think of a stone on my kitchen counter. I picked it up at the beach last year. It’s smooth and gray, like most of the rocks on the beach, with one difference: The holes. One hole pierces its middle. Two opened seashells lodge in another empty space like baby […]

Surviving Racial Disasters

It Happened. Again. Sneaker waves of racist lashes and systematic suicides keep hitting our neighborhoods, news feeds and nerve systems. Past reports about Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Ezell Ford have now been replaced with fresh videos of Walter Scott, Philip White, Eric Harris and Freddie Gray. I have screamed, cried, cussed and […]

The First Blizzard

I really couldn’t have scripted it better, the blizzard rolling into the city just in time for my second trip to the hospital that month. The first one had been unplanned, a midnight ambulance ride on the first deeply cold night of the year. I shared the emergency room at the city hospital with the […]

Between Rock Face and River

  When Phoenix started walking she pretty much just skipped the “find your feet” part and just went into full-scale running. She would run with this awkward gait, her hands flung out at her side, her head pushed out as far as it could go, and she would sprint on her toes. She did nothing […]

An Atmospheric Low of the Soul

cy·clone ˈsīˌklōn/ noun METEOROLOGY a system of winds rotating inward to an area of low atmospheric pressure, with a counterclockwise (northern hemisphere) or clockwise (southern hemisphere) circulation; a depression. Four months into the journey of motherhood, and my world is spinning. Sleepless nights, disordered days and the constant companionship of self-doubt swirl around me fiercely. […]

Pulling in the Anchor

      I am afraid of the sea.    Like my phobia of heights, this fear is at odds with the rest of me. For I am both a tree-climber (yes, at 37, still) and a beach lover. It is not the working my way up a rough trunk, finding toe-holds in knots and branches, but the […]

Camping in the Rubble

A cyclone threatened.  We knew the devastation it would leave in its wake would be enormous. As it began, we had no idea what the consequential damage would be, but we knew that it could not be stopped, and we had to wait until it had blown through before we’d know whether repair was going to be […]

That Wild Road

We were standing together on the southern slope when she showed me where the roof came clean off of her neighbor’s barn. Her own barn had lost just a bit of trim, she said. Though it did clock her mother-in-law on the shoulder as they came out to check on the animals. Still. They were blessed.  I had […]

Free Fall

  May 27, 2009. This is the day I learn I have cancer. Weird. I never thought I’d hear those words. I am still drowsy from anesthesia. The doctor just comes in, and she says, “Well, we thought it was hemorrhoids, but it’s not. It’s a tumor. It’s cancer.” Just like that. Now I am […]

Into the Storm

What happens when you vow to live awake and alive? What happens when you open yourself to the stir of Spirit symphony? What happens when you become an active participant in your own destiny? What happens? Excitement. Fear. A massive upheaval. In a word: Storm. I was going to keep a secret about this. My […]

Learning to Float

I don’t like going out in boats. There is something about a “recreational” structure floating out in the vast expanse of dark deep water where at any moment a storm could strike, sending me to an untimely death, which makes the idea of a relaxing boat ride nonexistent in my world. The bright orange vest […]

Surviving the Storm

I recently watched (read: sobbed through) an interview of a woman whose children were killed in the Tornado that savagely tore through Arkansas last year. One minute their hands were clasped together in the living room, the next she was face down, pantless, and severely injured, lying in a field of nothingness. But when she […]

The Fear Underneath It All

 To listen to the spoken-word version of this post by Ashley, click below.   “But the tigers come at night. With their voices soft as thunder. As they tear your world apart. As they turn your dreams to shame . . .”  ~”I Dreamed a Dream,” Les Miserables   “You’ll never do it again. Your words are […]

When Good Girls Get Angry

I never know what to do with my anger. I am sitting here, looking at the dining table, staring at a bunch of tulips haloed by the Spring sun, but all I can see is black. My hands are trembling, and my jaw is set. The offence that’s causing this rage is a relatively small infraction, […]

When the Rain Does Not Come

  I used to watch the summer monsoons as if they were a picture show. Our house was perched at the top of a hill overlooking Tucson. Every August, thunderheads would roll over the bluish hills and send their pencil-sketch lightning bolts down over the glittering city. I’d turn off all the lights, spin the […]