We are here and you’d like to forget it, have us more hidden then our black faces and tired, old eyes. Isn’t it enough to leave my own country as a teenager? Isn’t it enough to run on bare feet from my home that is at war with itself? Isn’t it enough to be homeless […]
mercy
Turning Compassion Inward
Amy sat with me on my screened porch at the lake, listening the way only a woman who has spent thirty years as a cloistered nun in a monastery, then three more years training to be a therapist, can listen. “You have compassion fatigue,” she said. “What?” I asked. “There’s an actual name for this? […]
How Can I Write about Freedom Now?
How can I write about freedom now, when the world (and my heart) is so often caged? How can I write about surrender when refugees are turned away? How can I write about joy when people of color are treated as unequal? I only have borrowed words to fill my empty cup: “How long, O […]
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 […]