Angels and Insects
I'd rather my children be who God created them to be, encompassing not only their unique gifts and talents and personhoods, but where and when they were born, and yes, who their parents are. And when...
View ArticleMagnificat
I understand things when I dance. I spend so much time living in my head, but there's a kinetic understanding in movement I don't have otherwise, particularly around subjects related to my faith. Asked...
View ArticleSqueak
I've always felt like a bad feminist for being afraid of bugs and other assorted pests -- I can drive a car, I can vote, I can go to college, I really should be able to deal with all things Insecta and...
View ArticleHome
This time, as my pregnancy has progressed and I've watched my daughter and son together, I didn't expect to feel these feelings again. I know beyond all possible doubt that what we have gained is more...
View ArticleBirthing Stories
It never ceases to amaze me how women -- mothers -- tell their birth stories. The mamas of the toddler gymnastics class are virtual strangers to me. I don't know any of their names, yet I've heard...
View ArticlePrayers for a Normal Life: A Review of Letters from a Distant Shore
Normalcy as Fiala and her family knew it disappeared that Labor Day weekend, with all the speed of blood rushing through a ruptured artery. The "normal" of family life and work -- swimming pools,...
View ArticleMe and My House
My life resembles this liturgy of baptism, in that it often seems like a series of questions. Unlike the liturgy, however, I don't have all the answers neatly printed out in a book I can follow.[Read...
View ArticleCradle Christian
I don't understand why I am sitting here, a Christian and a feminist...allowing a man in clerical garb to rebuke my young daughter....My spirituality is twined with flesh, with bodies that bleed and...
View ArticleThe Blues
What does it mean to me to be this temple? It's another metaphor for spirituality wrapped in earthly tissue, mortality somehow containing divinity. It's the same logic that gives us a God fully flesh,...
View ArticleA Big Pink Plus
In the shower, I lean my head against the wall and let the tepid, no-hot-water-when-you're-pregnant! water run down my back. I run my fingers lightly over my stomach. I really, really want another baby...
View ArticleBye’m
As I'm watching, she draws herself up to her full height. "Bye'm!" she accosts the man as he towers over her. "Bye'm! Bye'm! Bye'm!" I feel my eyes widen. She's telling him off. She barely even has a...
View ArticleTrusting and Turning
"So why do you hate Ephesians?" my husband finally asks. "Because," I say, munching my Goldfish, "every child-beating, wife-oppressing, misogynist male jerk out there spouts Ephesians..."[Read more...]
View ArticlePeace, Love, Perspective
But why should I pray that God will help me to forgive my husband, when God couldn't even be bothered to tap him on the shoulder this morning and whisper "Hey dude, don't forget the car seat"? Why...
View ArticleThe Last Day
The idea that all of God's children will be raised again to live with Him forever in paradise sounds like a fairy tale, doesn't it? Sometimes I wonder if I only believe it because I am too much of a...
View ArticleSaying No
I sometimes feel I can't turn around without stubbing my toe on the God-as-parent metaphor, hand in hand with its twin, you-are-your-child's-first-image-of-God.I love the idea of being God's image for...
View ArticleWhat’s in a Name?
I've been pondering the names we assign to things lately, and the relationship between the two: the name and the object, the sound and the signified, their arbitrary and sometimes contradictory...
View ArticleGreen Galoshes
I want my daughter's afternoon walk-turned-run to be perfect, her green galoshes bolstering her up into a world where everything is beautiful, everything is perfect, everything is Crayola-colored and...
View ArticleThe Church without Walls
"I can't do this," I tell my husband. And I sob. I want to go to church this morning, I've been looking forward to bringing my son to church since the day he was born, if not before. But I can't handle...
View ArticleChrist’s Own Forever
I can't answer. It is too real, too urgent: my child being baptized, being brought into the family of Christ, while another one of God's children lies on the floor only feet away from me, separated...
View ArticleStepping Stones
Fall brings a sudden cluster of milestones: my daughter weans, my son turns one. The colder weather hits my family hard. I am sick, then the children are sick, then my husband is sick. I am sick again....
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