From every window of my house
I can see water.  Lake and river surround me. 
I lie down in the green grass, but

the water isn’t always still.  Sometimes
it rages, and flimsy barriers of glass
and clapboard restrain the tempest’s damage.
The storms within the house are harder...

Our love is fatally flawed,
  but God’s love can always be trusted.

Love, Liz 

“His eye is on the sparrow,
  and I know he watches me.”         Civilla Durfee Martin

Every single one of us was made in God’s image for a purpose.  We tend to read scripture and generalize that purpose, assigning ourselves a list of tasks and ministries that we should do.  We know, for instance, that we should feed the hungry, care for widows and orphans, and...

“Republican prosperity has reduced hours and increased earning capacity, silenced discontent, put a ‘chicken in every pot.’  And a car in every backyard, to boot…The Republican Party rests its case on a record of stewardship and performance…..Wages, dividends,...

After our summer cottage was inundated by a Lake Michigan tsunami, we arrived to find the lower level of the home a jumbled, muddy mess.  Flood waters had ruined everything… furniture, walls, bathrooms, bedrooms all had to be abandoned.  We were one of three cottages in...

Let me begin by saying that I’m no expert on poetry…and upon Googling the word “poetry”, I read a definition on Wikipedia that I barely understand:

       "a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of...

Unaware of the deeps
  beyond the pristine circle of sand
the children play in the shallows…

three, four, five and six, they cannot see
  the future with its ripples and undertows—
the lurking heartbreaks, the engulfing diseases.

They count on the grown-ups to keep
  all...

The moral high ground
    is a perilous precipice,
    and the fall from there
                      is a long one.

Liz McFadzean

Photos by Gary and Peter Bayer

Sometimes life feels like unraveling
threads pulled and frayed
...

This is a big, beautiful country.  Last week I complained about western Kansas.  I’m sure that for the people born and raised there, even that broad expanse of flat grassland has a mesmerizing beauty.  When we moved back to the Midwest from California in the 1980s, I...