Birds and Branches

A Reflection on Being a Visitor About 8 years ago I attended a regional Catholic Worker gathering for families like mine: people of faith who operated houses of hospitality. I lamented to the other leaders that our first resident volunteer had prematurely announced her departure the week before, leaving the co-founder and me to lead […]

Emmanuel and Showing Up

The first few days of Advent, I felt irrationally angry. I tried to call it irritable or easily annoyed, but when I sat down to dig through it all what I found was anger. Advent is an invitation to the waiting, and frankly, I would like to decline. No thanks. Can’t come. Wish I could […]

And Yet.

  I’m not good at waiting. I never have been. Sadly, I can take after Veruca Salt in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, “Daddy, I want a golden goose, and I want it NOW!” Because the waiting is right where hope can feel a bit foolish. I sat in the bathtub one morning as child […]

When Your Birth is the Slow Kind

I have a book that I’ve been writing for a thousand years. (Are you really a thousand years old, you ask? Is that unnecessary hyperbole?) Oh, hush. I am. I must be, because I am quite sure that this book has taken me that long.  A thousand years, yesterday. That makes me a thousand and a day, today. […]

Emmanuel and Showing Up

The first few days of Advent, I felt irrationally angry. I tried to call it irritable or easily annoyed, but when I sat down to dig through it all what I found was anger. Advent is an invitation to the waiting, and frankly, I would like to decline. No thanks. Can’t come. Wish I could […]

The Power of Enduring

It’s Thanksgiving. I’ve been cycling through this mixed state of hypomania and depression all Fall. Relief came at the beginning of the month, like a release on a pressure valve, giving my mind and lungs the room I needed to breathe and just . . . be again. The cycling has slowed but has not […]

The God Who Waits

Advent is a season of waiting: for calendar chocolates, promised presents, Santa’s steps.   Advent is a season of longing: for life, and light, and hope beyond this world.    In Advent, we think we are the ones who are waiting.    But I think of the annunciation, in Leonardo Da Vinci’s Italian colours:    […]

Endurance is Not Cold Tolerance

When I was a new mom, I read that children go through periods of equilibrium and disequilibrium that last about six months each. I kept hoping my daughter was nearing the end of a period of disequilibrium. After all, my sweet girl had been pushing all my buttons for months with expert grace, and she […]

Living in the In-Between

November blindsided me with its arrival this year. I know everyone says the years go by faster the older you get, but this year has rushed by with startling speed. By the beginning of November I usually have the kids gather up some of the many branches that have fallen from the sturdy trees in […]