To Care and Not to Care

  I'm thankful for women like Sara Kay Mooney who share poetry that helps keep us alive. I never read much poetry up until maybe a couple years ago. That's when I needed something that wasn't neat and orderly because a Pandemic will teach you that. I liked the otherness of it...the freedom of words that  could mean this or that but then suddenly, you know exactly what it means. In her recent weekly Lent email, where she writes a short reflection and shares a poem, Sara brings up the question, "Do I want to be right or do I want to be healed?" I suppose this is something I'll always battle. I too, have lived and walked in too many circles where it's just easier to pull that fruit right off the tree and say to God, "Look, I can help you out just a little. I have great ideas! I don't know if You know this but, those people over there have really let themselves go and they're being such horrible witnesses for You!" But what happens when just

  Psalm 7 Deuteronomy 10:17-21 2 Peter 3:8-11 I was listening to the news the other day after dropping my boys off at school. As I pulled into my driveway, a man from the U.S. Senate was being interviewed about our role in the war in Ukraine. His answer created a knot in my stomach. “They need more weapons. The Ukranian freedom fighters need to win. We don't need them to lose slowly, we need them to win. They need to kill more Russians. In order to do that, we need to give them more weapons.” He spoke so firmly, it was as if there was no other answer. How often do we just blurt out a judgment on a situation or person? How often do I justify myself in my words and actions because I want justice now? All the time. I was struck by the Psalmist's inner conflict in Psalm 7. In one entire Psalm, he pours out three options to God, very aware of his own limited sense of justice. In the first part he says, “If I deserve punishment, then God let my enemies have their way.” In t

  "We are the map makers,  tracing lines of a land that others cannot see. The uncharted and the unresolved,  there be dragons here.  There be shadow and nightmare.  There be wonders. There be more beauty  than you can contain... Come sail with me." "God comes to us disguised as our life." -Paula D'Arcy  I too have always found deep meaning for my life within natural landscapes.  A vast, wide open frozen tundra, where the harshness of the elements keeps me awake, the stillness let's me breathe in wonder, the almost blinding brightness let's me know my limit, while my feet still tread on spacious ground. As Oscar Wilde said, go be yourself, everybody else is already taken. I truly am the only person who sees what I see, who feels what I feel, who can take in an experience and come away with an entirely different perspective than someone else in that same experience.  Where the healing and redemption happens is when someone else reaches out their hand and

  I read kind of a funny and sad quote recently that said something like, "the difference between Christmas for a child and an adult is you're so well-behaved when you're curled up on the couch reading a book, but do that as an adult and you're just rude and anti-social." I've been having a hard time with this assignment because, like most of us, it's really hard to remember what made me come alive as a child. The expectations for adults is very different than for a child...for good reason. But what happens when all those messages of growing up and making good choices and being responsible come at the cost of a lost imagination?  As a child, music and melodies would ignite entire worlds into my imagination. Flying and soaring, dancing on keys, playing out all sorts of emotions.  Now, when I sit down at the piano, it takes awhile for the dust to settle. Eventually I find her, that little Janell who just wanted everybody to get along. As I play the notes, so

  I went and baptized myself in beauty. Leaving, embracing  Silhouettes in motion. Push, carve, create  this path. My life is not just small twirling motions. It can be big if that's what it is. Small and quiet have their moment in the early morning dew. Blooming and saying yes have their time at twilight. I reach back as I step out to find who I am.  To baptize myself again in child-like giddiness. He did say let the little children come to Me for theirs is the Kingdom. I wander. I see things close and difficult to come to. I play. I'm beckoned to rise. All Rise, all Rise, all Rise.  It's a sin to kill a mockingbird and maybe the only way we can see things from somebody else's view is to  crawl around in his skin for awhile.  I don't always do what's right but I desire to. Thank God He doesn't look at our outsides.  So if I had a gallery of my life I'd want it to be like this - I'd have jazz playing, twinkle lights,  It'd be warm and intimate  f

  " An act of hospitality can only be poetic. " -Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality  Tension. What is this tight rope that I walk? I live in a world that doesn't want to grieve , to name the past and apologize. Forgive me, I don't know what to say anymore.. Just like the girl on the news yesterday, weeping, doesn't know what to do, after another school shooting.  I could rage here but I'll save that for behind closed doors.  It is a sad, mad, sick world and I feel the grief heavy today. I string up my lights on my mantle and put up my advent candles anyway. I take my little boy on a hunt to find eggnog lattes and find a bundle of balloons to smile at.    I feel the tension of leaning into a Godly hospitality, a movable feast In the midst of forks scraping on empty china plates. I feel the tension of hope in the midst of crushing loss . I feel the tension of glory in the midst of trash on our streets . I feel the tension of having a home in the midst of those who