Ugly Pies

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You Are Needed; but, first, a story

I’ve read all the pandemic advice (although not my own lately, I guess), about giving ourselves permission to be rather than to do, and I have said, “Sure, I can do that.” And, oh…

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Goodbye, fair blog

This is just a quick announcement to those who follow this blog and have been wondering where I’ve been. I’ve been dealing with a lot of big and little life things that have taken my attention every  where else but here.

I’ve made the good decision to close this blog in this space. I have been writing too little and creating too little content to keep paying for a personal domain name. This does…

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On Being An "Old" Human With Sleep Issues

On Being An “Old” Human With Sleep Issues

Last night, I tried to finish reading On Being Human, by Jennifer Pastiloff. I was more than a page into the last three pages, the very last chapter, when I just couldn’t read anymore. No, it wasn’t a brain aneurysm, or an emotional overload–it was time to make dinner for the big St. Faudrey’s Day* feast. Though, to be fair, the fish and the asparagus were being made by those being feted by the…

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In the Reaching

And in the din I found you, The God of my imagining

You were, as Bonnie Raitt said of a lover, ‘every bit of him, and a whole lot more.’

I am awake to you, now.

You are in the hand extended to the silly white dog with the brown patch around his left eye

And you are in the dog with the brown patch around his left eye, looking at the person extending the hand

And you are the person reaching with and…

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Returning to Grace ... and blogging

Returning to Grace … and blogging

Do you have any friends you haven’t met, like face-to-face?

I remember having a pen-pal once when I was a kid and that was the closest I got to having friends I never met until about ten years ago, when I started blogging.

There were a bunch of Unitarian Universalist ministers, seminarians, and just plain ole lay-folk who were sharing their experiences with learning about grace and justice, and…

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Morality, Mercy and Grace

Morality, Mercy and Grace

Content Warning: Miscarriage

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I don’t tell this story on its own. When I tell this story, it is as a piece of a litany of stories we lived through in 1996: a cross-country move with an infant, a toddler and two cats, joblessness, moving in with my mother-in-law with cancer, an unwanted pregnancy, a move into a new house with a roofing contractor from hell, a miscarriage, the death of my…

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Your Lady

Maybe she was just tired.

Holding up the ceiling and the ceremony and the secrets and the hegemony for 800 years very well might have been her undoing

She is not mine. I do not claim her, having never been to witness the history and the holy, and, even still, I can hold the hurt others bear.

But, maybe, just maybe, her time was up.

Maybe her façade shall stand as it was all along.

A face and a…

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Chronically Speaking: It's a good day

Chronically Speaking: It’s a good day

When my kids were little, I would pay a sitter to watch them so I could go somewhere else to write, supposedly without distraction. Just now, I handed my debit card over to my two adult children so they could go have brunch and leave me alone in my house.

Like I told my friend Karen, all those many years ago, “it doesn’t necessarily get easier; it just gets different.”

I’m “doing church” at home…

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I forgot the first rule of woodworking: ventilation.

It was too cold to go to the garage to stain the board I’ve been laboring over for at least a month, but I really wanted to do it. So I set up a makeshift staining stand in the basement and everything was going along nicely until …

I found myself talking to my board.

“You’re going to be beautiful no matter what,” I told it. “If your light parts…

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Love when it's hard to find

Love when it’s hard to find

There is a cat standing on my legs, posing like a ram on a mountain ledge. Another one (cat, not ram), is snuggled into the blanket at the end of the couch, giving me side-eye as I move my feet to more comfortably accommodate the ram. We are jostling each other, these cats and I. We are settling in, as if we have all day, when, in fact, we have 30 minutes, maybe less, before the timer goes off, I…

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An Airstream and a Dream: An Invitation

An Airstream and a Dream: An Invitation

When I can’t give money, I try to find ways to give something else—like amplification.

Today, I’m highlighting Fresher Together and ChefFresh’s Airstream and a Dream campaign. From the GoFundMe campaign page, here is the best description of what Fresh’s dream is:

Fresher Together is a collaborative food project for healing, economic development, training and retreat. I look forward to sharing…

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The Chaos We Make

The Chaos We Make

This is my view this morning. From right to left, the beginnings of a sock, tucked into a variegated skein of yarn; my blue mug of coffee; Ursula K. LeGuin’s final book of poetry, So Far So Good; TV remotes buried under the book and on top of the printed instructions for that sock; and vibrant green gummy bears direct from the factory.

My office is still a disaster of projects I wanted to…

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A Year of Wonder

A Year of Wonder

I’m pondering the new year as the bells in the church behind my home tell me it is noon with the canned recording of “O little town of Bethlehem.” Sometimes I wonder what makes New Year’s Day such a thing to celebrate any more than the start of any other day. My friend Hannah posted a picture of her son this morning and said “here’s to another year of wonder.” Maybe that is what got me to…

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Always a beginner

Writing has taken a back seat to many things lately. Actually, writing has been the kid I forgot at home, lately. I can feel it when it has been too long. So today, in the spirit of early fall, I shall muck out my brain with the hopes of it fertilizing the things to come.

Because I am beginning again, I brought out my old and trusted copy of Wild Mindby Natalie Goldberg. I bought the book…

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What happens to the boat-less in a high tide?

What happens to the boat-less in a high tide?

I’ve been mulling over that old phrase about a high tide raising all boats. I’ve been thinking about the boats that are only good on dry ground because the owners couldn’t afford preventative maintenance, or about those who don’t own a boat at all. For the people for whom the high tide floods, not raises, their livelihoods. Those who grab onto whatever floatation device they might find that then…

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Women in Entertainment: Turning the Gaslight Off

Women in Entertainment: Turning the Gaslight Off

Congratulations to GLOW(Glorious Women of Wrestling) for their recent Emmy nominations. My daughter introduced me to GLOW on Netflix earlier this summer. She was in the middle of binge watching the second season when I sat down and pretty soon, I was hooked.

The show follows a group of women and a few men who, in the early days of cable television, have started a show featuring women…

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Not the end

Earlier this year, or maybe it was last summer, I did a sermon at my home congregation wherein I shared the secret that consumed most of my life for the previous several years. I revealed the depth of my depression, a depth from which I finally had to admit out loud and to people that I had been considering suicide.

Giving the sermon was frightening, especially when my youngest daughter surprised…

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