Category: bitter real

• Trying not to be blind

  Police officers in riot gear watching demonstrators in St. Louis. Credit Joshua Lott/Reuters Driving around my city today, trying not to be blind.  Military vehicles and fatigues are sprinkled through my route from preschool, to Good Will, to the park, and home.  Hummers painted army green loiter in firehouse driveways.  A man in camouflage fatigues graciously accepts…

  September 20, 2017

• Endings and Beginnings

  photo by Dana Ross Martin An ending and a beginning overlapped for me recently. In the same weekend that I said “good-bye” to a dear friend who moved to another state, I joined a new retreat ministry and blessed the threshold of a new beginning. Experiencing these two events back-to-back felt, at first, like emotional…

  June 14, 2017

• The Descent of Mother Phoenix

  Most new babies come into the world cloaked in celebration and the chattering of new life.   What my faith and experience has taught me, though, is where there is something new being born, something old is dying.  After spending a couple of weeks with my new-mama sister I was reminded of the sacrificial face of…

  April 13, 2015

• Hospitalization

  I have never been hospitalized as a sick person until now; only well with babe in arm, grateful for food prepared and luminous face to behold.  But being poked and prodded and asked for bowel history feels different without a wriggling byproduct to render it all worthwhile I like to believe circumstances, even unpleasant ones,…

  March 23, 2015

• Anointing

  It’s the time when the tendrils of the day are reeled in, when little bodies look for warm holes in which to burrow, and the sound of quiet replaces the din of chatter.  That’s how I used to imagine bedtime with children.  And sometimes, on a rare sleepy night, we come close.  But often, especially…

  February 24, 2015

• When I’m Sad

  I had so many sweet, sensitive pieces echoing inside my head to write for Valentine’s Day weekend. I ate a lot of frosting. This is what came out. It’s real. Honesty is sacred. Happy Valentine’s Day When I’m sad I try not to show it.  I say, “I didn’t get enough sleep” or, “I’m stressed,”…

  February 14, 2015