I prefer…

“I would…ask each child their name. Names matter! Names are our deepest truth and beauty. Their name is Beloved.” “You’re freaking me out, Octopus Head.”

“We, this people, on this small and drifting planet…”

It's amazing to me that this ethereal thing, our imagination, produces, seemingly independent of our own will, new stories, characters, images, and more.

The start of a discussion about the current situation and what the church can do in response…

Maybe this seems like a kind of depressing thing to think and write about. Désolé. There is a sadness about it. But somehow it is beautiful, too.

A poem reading illustrated by drawings by my granddaughters.

“What is all this juice and all this joy?”

“Poetry is a vast ocean. In fact, it’s multiple vast oceans. And each ocean has thousands of beaches leading into it. Nobody will know everything about all the poetry. So if you’re interested, start where you are.”

It strikes me as so tender when I see someone tilting their head to one side to hear someone else.

Here is a picture of an 88-year lifespan -- one box = one week. There are a lot of boxes, yes, but look, it fits on a page!

Are you feeling anxious? Scared? Weighed down by dread? With all the sad, scary stuff going on with the Covid-19 virus and the uncertainty about what the future holds, these feelings are universal.

“Catholic theologian James Allison describes faith not as intellectually ascending to a set of theological propositions, but he describes faith as relaxing. Relaxing in the love and presence of God in the way we relax in the presence of someone we are certain is fond of us.“

“Maybe the Sermon on the Mount is all about Jesus’ lavish blessing of the people around him on that hillside who his world—like ours—didn’t seem to have much time for: people in pain, people who work for peace instead of profit, people who exercise mercy instead of vengeance.”

“We Earthlings are all susceptible to Covid-19, regardless of what country, city, or place we are citizens of. “

“They say ‘be not afraid,’ But never once have I stopped being afraid just because someone said that. I AM afraid.”

“A threshold is not a simple boundary;

it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres.”