saving the world is not our job
And still, there is so much time to practice loving, which is the paradox, isn’t it? We must do what we are here to do–to step into and join the work calling our names without fear, knowing that our work is meaningful and valuable and that our work is not the material with which we craft our identity. That we don’t need to hurry up and save the world–that the world every day is being saved, already, and we are invited to participate in the work.
on transfiguration (for nanny)
And more often than not, these transfiguration moments are transformation moments, because that’s, miraculously, how God works. That the death and the life are all tied up together, that they’re both inherently pieces of the other. That in order to fall in love, some parts of you have to die. Or when you face the results of some unfortunate thing you might have done, God forms you into a person that looks a little bit more like Jesus, which is life.
manifesto (a new year’s reflection)
Am I willing to adventure into the making, even if I might slip? Am I willing to make a mess? Am I willing to scratch out an idea when I’d rather be asleep? Am I willing to wake up and watch the snowfall instead of sleeping through it? Am I willing to say the brave thing that would be easier left unsaid, and remain accountable to it? Am I willing to take up space for the view? Am I willing to try to do the thing that scares me? And to commit, for the rest of my life, to the telling about it?
questions, unanswered
All this time, my body was moving towards answers even when I didn’t have the words. As I drove out of Pittsburgh for the last time, I realized this move felt big because it embodied the answers to the questions about what I believed to be important. The direction I turned at this fork in the road would determine both who I was and what I was trying to be in the world. This surety in my choice to come home that stunned me, this choice to listen (for once) to that holy tugging in my gut asking me to embrace my life. Not my friends’ lives, not lives of people I envy, not a noisy or particularly instagrammable, objectively impressive life, but the one that was unfolding in front of me. The life I was living. The life I am living. It was as if, all of a sudden, I understood that Mary Oliver line I began this post with: “the past is the past and the present is what your life is.” And above the cacophony of my own questions, Mary’s question to me cut through like a descant:
“will you live your life?”
a beautiful rebellion (for the feast of the annunciation)
a small collection of writings and poems for the feast of the annunciation
this generous darkness (for Ash Wednesday)
on remembering death, sitting in the questions, forming constellations, and the mystery of hope
it is, but it is home
a photo-music-poem collaboration with Gaute Lorentsen and Enoch Leung, inspired by the images of the Nordic landscape, the concept of naming a place as your home and the bold risk it is to claim a piece of earth as one’s own
here be dragons (for a new year)
a New Year reflection: on a year of writing haikus and walking into the next one, full of unknown and adventure and learning to be brave. Full of un-expectation. And maybe full of dragons, too.
wild, overflowing spring (on abundance)
an essay on tired fists and open hands, bitter winters and blistering heat, an overflowing fountain and a deep well
