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.

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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 …

Redeeming Emotions for Us All

His body was literally going in a circle, around on one side, his head the middle of a wheel spinning out of control. Kicking his legs against the carpet, he was moving his whole frame around and around, in a …

12/12: A Modest Proposal for Balance in Engagement

Emotions flicker, ideas and questions jump, one after another, reading the news and watching responses. Texts come in of prayer requests. Bills arrive to add dread to tomorrow. The news, the nation–it’s so much along with the ways our own …

Hi, my name is Danielle and I’m adopted from Korea.

A woman frantically threw handfuls of cash in the van window as we tried to depart the restaurant driveway. Our translator explained it was for my parents. She was thanking them for adopting us, the children of her country. My …

Diving: Motherhood and Chaplaincy

My oldest turned 10 a few days ago. A decade of the great experiment called parenting–the growing up ourselves, the falling down and picking up again, the long days and short years. It’s hard to believe I’m this deep into …