The Friendship of Grief

The Friendship of Grief

I woke to the song of mourning doves. Their soundtrack seems a part of the landscape here in the Texas Hill Country, along with the buzz of locusts on hot summer afternoons and the chirp of tree frogs in the scrub that separates our home from a fairway often inhabited by golfers with a penchant…

Divine Hospitality
|

Divine Hospitality

I keep thinking about bodies lately. My own as I pick something I can control, scrubbing my kitchen floor furiously, convinced that keeping it clean can fix things, change things, make things better. I think about my mother-in-law Nancy’s body, beginning its swift descent back to the earth. I think about what it means to…

A Whispered Prayer

A Whispered Prayer

Nature doesn’t always wait for us to hand over our toys. Sometimes, she takes them away without our permission. When I was 16, I memorized a poem that struck me even then with its poignant truth about the cycle of life. In his poem “Nature,” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) compares nature to a loving mother…

Courage

Courage

Courage         whispered the autumn leaf     He,        born of spring’s budding hope        commissioned for summer’s verdancy        yet most glorious in decline Courage          urged the autumn leaf   As he,         in trust and gratitude…

When Loss Is Your Teacher

When Loss Is Your Teacher

The red light on our answering machine blinked. We had just returned home from an evening children’s Christmas program, joyful in the spirit of the holiday. But my mood suddenly changed when I pressed the button on the machine and heard my mother’s voice, “We had to take Dad to the hospital. It looks serious….

Worn Hands

Worn Hands

I looked down at her hands, worn by so many years of labor. They seemed mostly of bone now, the fat and muscle mostly gone and the skin like a rag, twisted and stretched until it can never return to its original form. And, yet, they were beautiful to me. I spent much time looking…