Posts

Home as a Sacred Space

When I think about self-care, I think about the things that I do: activities, how I spend my time, spiritual practices, how I deal with stress. Recently I have been thinking instead about how my space shapes and influences me. This pondering was sparked by My Hygge Home by Meik Wiking (hygge: pronounced hoo-ga). Hygge […]

 I Want to Be a Homemaker

We found out we were pregnant the day Mary Oliver died, life entering into this world and life leaving. Opening pink box after pink box just to be sure, I began to have the best and worst feelings of my life, wanting to constantly vomit and simultaneously filled with revolutionary hope.  This was our polar […]

Birds of Paradise

My husband John and I were on our honeymoon when I was first introduced to what has become my most beloved pastime. Relaxing in a mountain cabin at the end of the winter, we enjoyed our first week of our marriage by feeding and identifying birds. “There is something Eden-like about it,” my husband had […]

Monday in Beverly Hills

I had just arrived a block west of Rodeo Drive to the church I would serve in Beverly Hills. The rector told me not to bring my lunch, that it would be the church’s treat on my first day. I decided that morning that the lunch venue would offer me some clues about how to […]

Home

Houses aren’t meant to sit empty. It’s hard on them. They’re meant for occupying—pipes need water to move through them, not just to sit and corrode. Windows and doors need to be opened and closed, lest they get stuck in place, stifling the air inside. Roofs need someone to notice when they leak. Wires need […]

A New Home In A New Land

Fifty-one years ago my maternal grandmother was sitting on a suitcase in Grand Central Station, crowds pressing in, sounds swirling around, smells lingering. Her new husband had gone off in search of some food for the final leg of their journey to their new home in Holland, MI. My grandpa clutched their one lone American […]

My Elective in Musical Outreach

As my first year of seminary drew to a close, my friends and I decided that we needed to commemorate our survival of a particularly difficult class. We kicked around several ideas, and ultimately we voted to raise a glass and take in the vocal stylings of some local “talent.” In other words, we were […]

In it for the long haul

We’ve been in our home for a year now. In actuality, it’s been almost two years, but that first year, this didn’t feel like our home. We were renting. Now we own our home (or at least part of it), and I feel settled. I am a nester. Not in the sense that I like […]