• Being Human - Light

    The Dress and The Sock Drawer

    September 3, 2014 - By 

    Well you see, I bought a dress online. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It looked nice! …Black field, curving chains… I don’t know what I was thinking. When the dress arrived — to say it was unsuitable would be an understatement. With all the chains I looked as though I was a prisoner on a pirate ship. I looked like I was about the walk the plank. I looked like Harry Houdini jumping into a tank of water. The dress was just plain wrong. When I tried to return the dress, my computer screen showed —…

  • Being Human - Childhood - Hope - Light

    The Twenty-Dollar Bill

    August 22, 2014 - By 

    When we lived in St. Louis I taught kindergarten sunday school. At the beginning of class, as in many sunday schools, first we took attendance and then we collected a little something for charity. On one particular day we passed the small donation envelope around the room. Quarters fell in, dimes, on top of one another, ‘clink, clink . . . clink.’ It was little Lauren’s turn. She had found a twenty-dollar bill at a store earlier that week and had turned it in to the store’s ‘lost and found’. After a few days the store called her parents to…

  • Being Human - Childhood - Fear - Hope - Safety

    We’d like to put you in a home.

    August 19, 2014 - By 

    When I was a little girl, I always thought I would live near Chicago. It had never, in fact, occurred to me that any one of us might leave. But then, for me, there was California and then Missouri – Georgia and now Wisconsin. Finding a home and making a home has become very important to me. It might be also for many people. My friend’s nine-year old daughter continued to look at houses on zillow.com, for hours at a time– for three months after they had already moved. Was she still looking for a place to belong? A hundred…

  • Being Human - Darkness - Hope

    Everything is a Seed.

    August 15, 2014 - By 

    There is violence, racism and inequality in our world. It begins somewhere…with a seed of mistrust.   Who planted this seed? I did.   Because seeds begin with us and we plant them, intentionally or not. As a hopeful soul there are always seeds that I want to plant.  And those hardly ever grow.  It is hit or miss, basically. Along with all the other hopeful souls in the four-season world, the end of summer makes me excited for the bulbs which I can plant in September for the time when life returns after long winter. I gaze longingly at the…

  • Being Human - Fear - Hope

    “Is this all there is?”

    August 13, 2014 - By 

    Two years before my father died, he was refusing medical treatment. At that time it became increasingly apparent that if he did not choose treatment soon, his passing would be very soon after. It had not been very much time — perhaps only a year — since his own mother had died, just before her 103rd birthday. So there we were, in the hospital.   My father said to me “why didn’t I have 103 years?” And then: “Is this all there is??” To me, this was the most spectacular question I had ever heard — not to mention the…

  • Being Human

    Everyone Has Bones

    August 10, 2014 - By 

    A hundred years ago, when I was in college, it was my job to plan all the big events for the university’s Student Union. And when it was Halloween and I had to plan the Student Union Party, I had this bright idea (!?) that I wanted a skeleton to greet everyone as they entered the party.  As it turns out, to find a skeleton at a large university is not the most difficult thing in the world, if you are willing to work for it. And I was. After inquiring all over campus, I finally found a skeleton at…

  • Being Human

    Coffee and Cravings

    August 5, 2014 - By 

    They say that a little bit of what you love is good for you, right? Because I love coffee. I have stopped drinking it for a long, long time now. In fact, I am afraid to go back to it because, for me, it is like cocaine. I am not just talking about the buzz…of course there’s that…but about the flavor, the bitterness, the sweetness, the blackness, (not just the color but something ineffable, dark, unnameable) the ohhhhhh. I don’t know what it is that I want so much. It is almost transcendental. I am sure that my husband will…