In the account of the formation of the early Christian church in Acts 11, persecution in Jerusalem has scattered and dispersed the new Christians to the wider world.  They go proclaiming the Lord Jesus, first to the Jews, but eventually to the Greeks and other Gentiles as well.  God had made it clea...

In less than a month my husband and I will begin our pilgrimage across the country to our summer place on Lake Michigan, in a community called Epworth Heights.  When I first started returning to Epworth as an adult, it was for eight weeks each summer.  It felt like a decadent amount of time to retre...

crucified
            a poem for Kilmar  

I taste the salt in my tears,
in his sweat the bitter taste of blood

I watch him carted away, buried in a tomb,
a prison built to set all of us free.

Separated from his mother,
from all his beloved tribe.

The ground could not hold him;
rising, he released the...

Who do you say you are?  Do you identify yourself by gender, by job or by calling?  For instance, I am wife, mother, grandmother.  I am a curator and chronicler of stories, a lover of books and writers and literature. 

Recently I had the opportunity to interview writer Adriana Trigiani via Zoom for...

Each year I forget about the bulbs
lying dormant in the earth,
the ones I planted years and years ago,
a secret stash of buried treasure.
Suddenly one morning there’s a frenzy
of yellow daffodils—botanic fireworks.

Purple hyacinths follow
arriving fully formed from under
the winter ground;
I’ve never even ...

You are my best friend,
and I hate to leave you,
which one day I shall have to do
unless you leave me first.

These are the eventualities of life:
the long solo walk
the journey we can only take alone
the yearning for a hand to hold ours
the darkness with no candle
to light our way.

In spite of this, my ho...

“The Lord works righteousness and justice for all the oppressed.”  Psalm 103:6

Righteousness can be defined as being set apart, in particular, set apart by or for God.  Sometimes justice demands set-apartness.  When the scales have been tipped in favor of one group of people over another, then s...

Words come tumbling, jumbling out,
a collection of random letters
spoken into the unhearing ear;
and, while I try to keep my wordcount
to a reasonable roar, there are more,
there are more and more and more. 

   Will you hear me; will you listen
   though I speak without precision?
   Will you sort through...

A week ago, I sent my cousins back to their respective homes in Florida, South Carolina, Arkansas and Oregon.  It was a bittersweet parting after five glorious days together.  We did a little sight-seeing, hot-tubbing, playing cards and dominoes.  We shopped for groceries together and took walks in ...

I have a strong desire to help people, particularly those that I see making self-destructive choices…choices that not only take them into places that make their own lives harder, but also impact others as well, including me.  I’ve had incidents when I can so clearly see someone is being hampered by ...