This month, we packed up a rented van (our Odyssey is at the end of its long and wild life and has a troubling Transmissions Light on) and drove across the country on out annual summer road trip. This time around, we went toward the Southwestern US. We wandered downtown Omaha. We camped in Estes Park. We stayed at a “glamping” place called “Under Canvas” next to Arches National and at a dive motel in Kanab, Utah near Coral Pink Sand Dunes. We drove through the endless, apocalyptic landscape from Utah to Arizona where the air rippled with heat, and then we hiked the rim of the Grand Canyon f ..read more

Because of Rachel Held Evans You must have known that it would be like this: grief. That it would ribbon  like smoke into the sky, unfurling  into a million tiny tendrils, each one carrying the stunning potency of loss. You must have known, because somewhere in the poem that became The Beginning,  you said, Let there be language. Or maybe you just said, Let there be light, and it meant the same thing. You, after all, are the one who threaded words  into the double-helix of our being. You were the one with the needle, the one knotting  us together across the deep spans of lonelin ..read more

For the medicine rivering into the body, quieting the brain — with all its whirring planning, stressing,  seizing — We give You praise. In the absence of medical answers, we give thanks for the profound mystery of unconsciousness — for the Voice that smooths the turbulent activity of the mind into something like still waters. Walk softly, O God, through these dark streets — neurons and synapsis switched off like lights on a timer, Fibrous axons floating gently in the dark. There is no one here but  Her.  You. The wide, unbroken sky. In the absence of all those flashing neurotransm ..read more

You guys! We made it through March! The thaw (or, my new favorite phrase for it, the break-up season) is in full swing here, and the St. Croix river is dammed up with mountains of sandbags so that it doesn’t flood the little river towns here in the valley. My sons have been taking their coats off at recess, the tile floor is covered with muddy shoe prints and paw prints, and we are all shaking ourselves out of hibernation. I spent a lot of time cozied up with the cats working on a fiction project, which has been all kinds of challenging fun. I read lots of books. We bought an infrar ..read more

A ..read more