A deduction from the gross weight, tare

When they want you to buy something they will call you. When they want you to die for profit they will let you know. So friends, every day do something that won’t compute. Love the Lord. Love the world… Ask …

A Good Enneagram 1

I lovingly gaze back on that girl in bangs with a twinge of sadness and note of pride and wonder at whose idea it was to  smear heavy on her warm insides the idea of personal responsibility for  every person’s …

Every Other

E V E R Y O T H E R some thingsskip generations likebuying generic and wearing bathrobes.for me it’s hearing the story of your birthand pillowing your face into your mother’sleftover skin from when you were in her.my mother’s …

Please Tell the Others

I was wondering if we could agree To     vote        for           freedom. Would it be too much to say that we, say, all of us, Vote      for      …

Attend

Ups and downs, ups and downs.

Be gentle with the celebration and grief; they are our inhale and exhale and we live by both.

Our capacity for sorrow expands our room for joy and also that in reverse.

Be gentle, fellow traveler. We are sick and growing, pilgriming and arriving.

We are child and elder before each day; we come from a long line of experience and yet draw near the moment baby new.

Our best hope of living is exposure and contamination. Overcoming is choosing when to shower.

Hold out for meaning; the ocean is in each tear, each bead of sweat, each breath on the mirror.

Salvation is tender and deeper than you were taught to go; we are larger than we thought but smaller than we knew.

Attend, attend. Tend, tend. End, end.

Carpooling Home: a Chaplain’s Commute

I leave the parking lot of jacaranda trees and signs for “heroes” with my badge still on, stomach growling for dinner and spirit aching from helplessness.  It’s the first day of the week. The purple blooms remind me of a …

The Door of the Covid-19 Pandemic

“Be calm. God awaits you at the door,” whispers Gabriel Garcia Marquez, famed Latin American author in Love in a Time of Cholera. How does one be calm in a time of pandemic? How might we bring along our resources …

Becoming Dust Again

Dipping my thumb into the small container of inky black ash, I would try to remember the name, find the name tag, or take a peek at the patient’s info board in the room. Deep breath. “You are beloved, [name]. Remember …

So Far This Sucks

It is hard to proceed right now. Before the holidays, the president pardoned men that brave and diligent military officers brought to light as guilty of war crimes and dangerous to their cause. Now, mere hours into 2020, POTUS has …

The Hospital Labyrinth

Like an ancient labyrinth of prayer, where there are no dead ends or wrong turns, only path, the hospital holds and pulls. It teaches us in the repetitive order hidden in chaos. A labyrinth of life and death, a space …