Breastfeeding: The Perfect Solution!

Religion

A poem by Kaitlyn Schrier, and a response of my own.
sometimes I wonder
if mary breastfed jesus
if she cried out when he bit her
or if she sobbed when he would not latch

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Highway to God

Religion

It’s easy to read these three verses as one long command, a kind of highway construction checklist: make a straight road, make it level, fill in the ruts, even out the grade—and if you do all these things, God’s glory will be revealed.

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Don’t Panic

Religion

I am not someone who really needs to be encouraged to stay alert. I’m already too alert. I already fear the worst.

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Jesus Is Coming—and We’re Busted

Religion

Daaaaaaaamn. That is rough stuff.

This passage from Amos is part of a lesson from the daily office for the first Sunday of Advent.

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Midlife Crisis


Journal

The depression and anxiety are getting worse this week. I’m starting to clench my jaw more, and have more trouble getting to sleep and staying asleep. Everything feels urgent, but I’m not motivated to do much. It’s clear the cocktail of medications I’m on is not working out for me.

May 17, 2018

Listening


Journal

I’m not posting much on Facebook these days. Except for today, I haven’t written a public post on this blog in several weeks. I’m not making many phone calls, or reaching out much to people to have lunch or coffee or just text and say hi. I’ve gone quiet. I’ve gone dark.

May 10, 2018

Being Ordinary


Journal

My grandfather and great grandfather were chemistry professors, world-renowned in their field, winning many awards and much recognition for their research. My grandfather’s brothers were also all professors. My stepmother had a long and successful career as a librarian in an academic library.

May 10, 2018

Incoherence


Journal

I’ve been drawing a lot recently. By drawing, I mean doing a combination of Zentangle and my own designs, and sometimes wilder art, all of it in my art journal.

April 12, 2018

This is what resurrection looks like


Religion

“This is what resurrection looks like,” the priest said, by candlelight, at the Easter Vigil service. She described feeling like the “dry bones” we’d heard about in the passage from Ezekiel after her husband, mother, and father died all in the space of a couple of months.

April 5, 2018

Being Clever


Journal

When I stopped posting on Facebook, the first thing I missed was writing little clever posts about the world around me. I realized I had been devoting a significant chunk of my brain and my attention to noticing things and then composing a status that summarized them in a concise, clever way.

March 26, 2018

I Need You To Write


Journal

I am considering doing a scary thing. After a year and a half of saying out loud that I was letting the first draft of my book sit, but secretly poking it in my mind over and over, I am now realizing I need to let it go completely.

March 22, 2018

Zombie


Journal

This week I’ve found myself tongue-tied again—not that I can’t talk out loud, but that there is a sort of silence inside myself, a part that feels incoherent and stuck and unable to express itself.

March 15, 2018

Guns, School, and My Six-Year-Old


Public Issues

Today the PTA for my son’s elementary school sent out a well handled email about the two upcoming days that people nationwide are planning to walk out of school to protest the school shooting in Parkland, Florida. After I read the email, I found myself mindlessly playing Plants Vs. Zombies.

March 10, 2018

Living in the Wilderness


Religion

Thus says the Lord: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength, whose hearts turn away from the Lord. They shall be like a shrub in the desert, and shall not see when relief comes. They shall live in the parched places of the wilderness, in an uninhabited salt […]

March 8, 2018