Spirals

Magnificent Spirals make the universe, and unmake our minds at times:           downward      or upward either way too much, too fast and angry or lost, or broken and bitter, and not knowing, just spinning in cycles of growth and hormones, and probably hungry, and out of control.   There is a path to get back to,…

Read More

Learning to Laugh

Always the lists. Give me too much free time between calls at work, and a fairly slow day with no nearby neighbors to visit with, and I used pages and pages of scratch paper to make lists for the New Year. Lists about working out, and menus, and lists of chores and how to rotate…

Read More

Magic Dragons and Refusing to Grow Up

Today, Bean and I had some errands to run, and I chose the Pandora Station “Peter, Paul and Mommy” for our musical background. We sang along to Feed the Birds, from Mary Poppins, and some Simon & Garfunkel, a little John Denver, songs from The Sound of Music and we sang Puff the Magic Dragon…

Read More

I Have Been Waiting my Whole Entire Life for this Moment!

No, I cannot hide emotion well. I am a poet, for Pete’s Sake. I feel everything deeply, I express what I feel in words or with tears, or with a face that says it all. I am easily read by those around me. My little Bean is old enough to want to read The Chronicles…

Read More

Sweetness or Stuff

A little memory – a treasure to cherish. Rummaging in the Antique Store with my boys, looking through playthings of the past. They call me to try on a beautiful faux fur, and it fits, and it’s glorious, and I am the toast of the town.   The large Islander man at the back counter…

Read More

Microcosm & Minutiae

Driving straight into a thick blanket of fog, I wondered about our world, the darkness and lack of visibility we are entering. I remembered the blizzard in the Little House on the Prairie books that hit suddenly while children were at the school-house. They formed a line with outstretched arms – trying to get all…

Read More

Before These Moments Slip Away

par·a·dox noun \ˈper-ə-ˌdäks, ˈpa-rə-\ : something (such as a situation) that is made up of two opposite things and that seems impossible but is actually true or possible   Ben went through a Phantom of the Opera phase a while back, after reading a kid version of the story at school, and made the mask,…

Read More

Books will Save Us

I have gotten out of the habit of writing, and my world is suffering. The walls start closing in on me when my creativity is on hiatus. When I am drawn like a moth to bad news, and the marching feet of the demise of our civilization, I sit stoop-shouldered and spineless and terrified –…

Read More

The Stories of our Lives

It all started with Harold & the Purple Crayon. My youngest and I read the story together in front of a blazing fire and he said he wanted to have this book in his collection someday when he grows up and moves out. I told him he would need his own copy because there are…

Read More

Today I Choose Love and Light

  This morning, I read Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and my whole spirit calmed down. He lived and was martyred during one of the most awful periods for the church. And yet, his words are like a balm and a reminder of what community is supposed to be like for believers. I do not think we are…

Read More

Restored

When something takes on otherworldly proportions because of its simplicity and beauty.

Imagining Pictures in the Clouds

My boys and I see pictures in the sky. We see big, bold, ridiculous, pictures sometimes, and we laugh and point. This is beginner imagination building that we have been doing since they were tiny. Now, they can create a story out of thin air. (The picture here looks a little like Olive Oil, from…

Read More