Last night while putting little she-who-is to bed, the fan and nightlights in her room began flickering. They’d been doing this the last couple of days. R went to check out the circuit breaker and found that the big one that controls all the outlets and lights was making a disturbing buzzing/sparking noise. So we […]

So I decided to stick it out on the Oscars after all.
From Keith. If the answer is clever, it’s one of his.

What time do you get up in the morning?when the divine miss m gets up, anytime between 6:30 or 7:30
Diamonds or pearls?I have a diamond engagement ring but I don’t wear it these days. […]

The bummer of being on the East Coast is that the Oscars run WAY too late. I’m about to go to bed at the next commercial break and they haven’t even done the “In Memoriam” montage.
We were expecting wintry mix today, but got plain ol’ snow and several inches of it. The Lent stuff went […]

The divine miss m has been sleeping and eating poorly this week and is a little gunky, so we took her to the walk-in ped clinic. Three weeks ago we thought it was an eye infection and it turned out to be ears. This time we thought it might be ears again and it was […]

it was also a wednesday
when the last remnant of him in the whole world arrived.
the rest has ground into gulf-coast clay,
sparkled the surface of a lapping pond,
lilted above a pigtailed girl high on the swings.
i am flesh of his flesh;
to my flesh he returned
wedged on a truck
between parcels of Extreme Elmo
and jolly plump citrus.
like the […]

Lent Disciplines
I have done a variety of things for Lent. Some years I have given up chocolate, other years TV. One year I gave up worry; I got a lot out of that, though I lapsed often.
Other years I take on something additional. This year I will be doing morning pages (three pages of free-flow […]

So we have this emphasis during Lent on the creative and liturgical arts, and our foundation scripture is the anointing of Jesus in which he says, “She has done a beautiful thing for me.” The idea being that we are all called to do “a beautiful thing” for God, regardless of our particular gifts or […]

the elder girl shifts in the chair,
makes room for the scrabbling toddler
desperate to climb up, keep up.
they’re too consumed by giggling into each other’s faces
(when not jostling for cushion)
to notice the shower of white outside,
each flake unique,
the stuff of legend, grade-school science, cliché:
had i taken the trip that one month,
had he gotten stuck in traffic […]

I’m thrilled to be back with the family. It was great to see them. As for work/church, it’s a bit of a shock to the system. What? Meeting tonight? You mean I can’t just hunker down with my knitting on this chilly evening? And, huh? Check requests? Print deadlines? Choosing colors for banners? Can’t I […]

As you know, I am downtown on retreat this week. Most of the retreatants are from out of town, so I get to experience this place through the eyes of visitors. So in the spirit of tourism:
1. What is one place you make sure to take out-of-town guests when they visit? (you can be vague […]

through a welsh drawl we are told:
a cathedral
is both a protest and a proclamation.
a gymnasium for the imagination.
frozen music.
a place of clarity, not certainty.
an egg, a nest, a house, a country, a universe.
all i know is, last night
i thought it an ark:
bleached planks, cross pieces,
it locked us inside itself—
no, i mean to say
it swallowed us whole.
over […]

Only ppb can turn a trip to the bookstore into a work of art. I bought some gifts for little she and R, and a couple of books. I SO do not need any more books, but I like having souvenirs from conferences. So I bought Harold Bloom’s anthology of American religious poetry, which is […]

i knit as on the old typewriter;
stitch to the end of the row, then zip!
and back to the other side;
lines of young wheat
spread over the plains
of a worn wood chair, my lap;
out the other side, a single strand burrows
into the near-spent skein,
a nest of tangles. i pull, and everything
clamps around it, as i knew it […]

the “wise elder” from wales
pauses between words,
within them, even,
rolling the syllables,
tasting them like grapes;
she strolls to the easel,
a single word: ponder.
(latin, pondus: to weigh.)
in the afternoon, buses growl uphill,
sleet raps, tick tick, on the glass,
and evening lectures are cancelled.
inside it is so still
i forget to breathe
anditcomesinarush.
The retreat is about recovering the religious imagination, about “finding […]