Drops
Forgetting What’s Stored
I’ve been placing batch after batch of roasted tomatoes into my deep freezer that sits like a sleeping white polar bear in the back of my garage. All throughout the autumn and winter, the stored tomatoes will remain right there: available, ready, nourishing. During those bitter cold days, warm tomato soup awaits. But I can guarantee […]
Your Roadblock
Today I remind a student writing about life’s roadblocks that “the impeded stream is the one that sings.” Wendell Berry wrote this in his poem “The Real Work”: “It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way […]
“Small disconnected facts, if you take note of them, have a way of becoming connected.” Walker Percy
I wake up and scroll through my phone to learn about a Wendell Berry quote I had forgotten. At the end of his poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” Berry says simply: Practice resurrection. It’s a beautiful line in a beautiful poem. I think about what it would mean to “practice resurrection” each day […]
Warm, Baking Things
Last night at our gathering of grad students, one friend arrived with a bowl of homemade cookie dough. He turned on the oven, we got out our baking stone, and we we began to bake the warm oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. All throughout the evening, I’d waltz around with warm, gooey cookies on a platter […]
Late Afternoon Sunlight and The Weary Heart
I often leave in the afternoon for a quick walk around the block. I love late afternoon sunlight. Seeing how that finger of light stretches down to warm up and bring light to the darkening plant reminds me of my own heart’s need for God’s refreshing presence.
Late Afternoon Harvest
Training Your Mind In Hope
Last night I shared with women at church my journey to “train my mind in hope” based on the biblical principles of Jeremiah’s choosing to call to mind the new mercies of God (Lamentations 3), David’s cry that God would “show [him] the wonder of His great love” (Psalm 17), and the truth of Romans 15:13 […]
Lightening Your Load
I’m trudging across the campus with a bag full of library books to return. My arms ache and the morning sun feels much hotter than it should. Finally, I reach the book return and unload each book one by one. The feeling of sudden lightness, of relief and ease, and of simple comfort takes me […]
“Glory be to God for dappled things.”
As I walk today under a pelting of fat green and brown acorns that I then crunch underfoot, I remember one of my favorite poems, “Pied Beauty” by Gerard Manley Hopkins. The sun casts beautiful patterns through the barely green leaves. The sidewalk collects her own design of light and leaf. It’s dappled and stippled […]