Communion
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moreWhy You need an Island of Quiet right now
On Wednesday, March 27 th, 2013Sunday, there’d been the crowning, the waving of the palms. Monday, then the cleansing, the cursing of the fig. Tuesday, the conflict, the plotting of the Pharisee. Then come Thursday — there would be the communion, the breaking of the bread. And Friday, the crucifixion, the hanging of the impossible dead. And at no point could anyone have imag...
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moreThe Best Way to do Christmas Cleaning
On Friday, December 07 th, 2012Why it happened right then, when she turned toward the stack of dishes on the counters, the ...
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moreHow to Really Live
On Monday, August 13 th, 2012It’s like an awakening. That right in the middle of the Sunday sermon, while the pastor’s preaching what salvation really means, I can see a woman in a pew ahead of me flipping through the pages of an Avon catalogue. I can only bow my head. Because there are a thousand ways to be lukewarm and there’s a reason I know that. I’ve been ap...
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moreWhat in the World Should Christians Wear?
On Tuesday, June 12 th, 2012He does a double take. It’s got to be my ridiculous bed head. I step back from the luggage carousel, run my fingers through tired hair. It’s mid June and I’m flying home from speaking, only to find my flight home to Canada canceled. It had been after 2 in the morning when I finally fell into the pillow in a darkened hotel room, heavy air freshener masking a millio...
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moreHow to Really Survive a Heart Attack
On Thursday, May 24 th, 2012Mama calls me to tell me that her mama’s had a heart attack. I hold the receiver close. Lower myself into a chair. Granny of the tea biscuits and the white light netted up in her white hair — she’s hardly standing at the side of her bed when her heart gets blocked and bits of her on the inside explode. On t...
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moreHow in this World Do You Find Joy? ……. {Holy Week: Part 4}
On Thursday, April 05 th, 2012In the middle of Passion Week, we work dirt. We pick stones off the field, haul off rocks to ready a seed bed. There are eggs in an incubator downstairs in a closet. The whole world is this ticking, waiting, readying thing, on the brink of something cosmic, on the brink of the Biggest Bang — that slamming hammer and the howl of God ringing to the stars. That’s what ...
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moreWhat to do when Life’s Dented & Banged Up
On Friday, March 02 nd, 2012It only seems canned, like that dented tin you pull off the markdown shelf, this life tucking in cotton sheets, chopping onions, clipping socks to the line with wooden pins grooved grey by sun and wind and spinning earth — and there are days, the drowsy ones, that I blithely buy it, pay my dollar ninety nine and think that none of this is shockingly cosm...
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moreThe Secret to Fasting in a Lent that is Failing
On Wednesday, February 29 th, 2012Dust cloth in hand, that is what I’m thinking Lent’s all about. Don’t I desperately want to be changed when Easter morning dawns? For something different to have dawned in me. I wash things down. I m...
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morewhat to cling to on the days you’re drowning
On Tuesday, January 24 th, 2012I ‘m tired and worn by noon when I sit there beside him and he peels back the skin of his orange in the light. He does this everyday after noon meal and he does it slow. I feel slow and there are kids and lessons and laundry and everything else. I’m trying to hold on. The curve of the peel, it cleaves to the sweet, and it’s the skin of the th...
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morewhen you’re broken
On Wednesday, August 24 th, 2011Christ comes to us in the only way any of us can recognize — with a body right broken. Who of us isn’t busted? On a Sunday, the pastor breaks the loaves, three of them, are broken right down the center. Lays them white faced on silver platters, then takes them in hand and tur...
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moreWhy Do Lent? Why A Failing Lent Actually Succeeds (& a Booklist)
On Wednesday, March 09 th, 2011I can’t seem to follow through in giving up for Lent. Which makes me want to just give up Lent. Which makes me question Who I am following. Which may precisely be the point of Lent. Last week, I’m standing on a table, snapping the shutter on a bouquet of roses, when by brother calls. Levi picks it up, his eyes twinkling, stars risen early. I can on...
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moreThe Art of Celebrating a Messy Life Anyways
On Friday, March 04 th, 2011She says she aches for me, like down inside of her, like where the winds howl and we moan. And I tell her that there are pots on the stove and crumbs on the counters and yes, wherever we are, there’s always hard things howling through the rhythms of the cooking, the washing, the dishes always stacking this side of the sink, then the other, framing all the prayers. ...
