On Redemption
As humans, we inevitably experience harm: we feel hurt, we get hurt, and we hurt others. We free ourselves from this experience not by imagining we can escape harm but knowing we can heal it—…
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A gracious healing
The God of my childhood embodied justice. Cohesion. A God deeply troubled by iterations of human-wrought injustice. The ground of being riven by spilled blood. My early years rang with the sonorous cadences and exhortations…
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My Grandmother’s Journal
I began this piece over twenty years ago and returned to it in 2014. I re-read it recently before sending it to a cousin, the namesake of my grandmother who is curious about the woman…
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Listening to the body of the Earth, Passover 2020
Drizzle punctuates the dun sky, appearing far less vernal than April 9th might wish. A cerulean ribbon aloft tender shoots of daffodils might yield more cheer but for Maundy Thursday and Passover combined, the weather…
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Listening to the tree of my own knowing
I have never been a fan of the annual physical. Back in 1993, my partner at the time urged me to see her gynecologist. “You are long overdue an exam,” she scolded, so reluctantly I…
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Ruminating on the cusp of Spring
I dwell in the both/and. Like many folks, news of the cornonavirus shapes the day, mostly emptying it, which gives me time to ruminate. As I ate lunch today, I began thinking about all the…
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The Call of the Tent
This essay appears in the online journal of the Tennessee Humanities Council, Chapter 16. A writer considers the meaning of sacred space As a child in the South I would see them: giant tents erected…
Revisiting the fields of promise, listening
to Harold If I could write to you what would I say?This lament is for medriving home tonightin my silver sports car,not so unlike you,wanting for one moment to sailout there, over the film of…
Excerpt: From the Midway: Unfolding Stories of Redemption and Belonging
The nuns at the hospital in New Orleans knew they could not raise him, but they could not let him die either, so they allowed a couple named Cole to adopt the boy with…