Writing, Parenting, and Working in the Mess: Authentic Spirituality and Social Justice

Note to reader: All the text in italics is from Mary Oliver's poem "Love Sorrow."  Love sorrow. She is yours now, and you must take care of what has been given. Brush her hair, help her into her little coat, hold her hand, especially when crossing a street. For, think, what if you should lose her? Then you would be  sorrow yourself; her drawn face, her sleeplessness would be yours.  She stretches out her fingers, shyly, this child who is anything but shy. As the woman paints her nails, she chats excitedly about everyone she knows who has been adopted. She calls over her grandmother, wo owns the small salon--the only one nearby with an opening on such short notice--to tell her it is our daughter's adoption day.  Before that, I walk our son to the door of his school, then into his classroom. He doesn't want to let go of my hand. This is unusual--usually he runs into the building with something specific he wants to tell his para, who waits for him just inside the doo...

Every year I join an online community focused on Advent. Some years, I participate in the chat; most years, though, I simply read the beautiful meditations by Jan Richardson and freewrite about the questions she poses in my journal. And, I have two other Advent devotionals I really love and try to read whenever I have a break throughout the day, as well as my own writing practice of trying to post here. Plus, every year I have a devotional I carefully choose for the year, not always rooted in Christianity—though this year’s is. So, it, too, has become an Advent devotional in this time of year. I mean, what can I say? I love this season. Usually I am up early, sitting with the readings, then working out, then letting the dogs out, then getting a shower in, all before the first child needs my attention at 7:00. But this year my grandson has some days needed care earlier than that—and other days, because of the demands of the kids, work, and life, I’ve used that morning time to get ...

 In a year when everything seems backwards or slightly out of focus, even the trees are confused, turning at the wrong times, showing the wrong colors.  “I love your maple, as always,” I say to my neighbor, looking up at a canopy of reddish-yellow leaves, “but I miss the usual bright red.” “Yes, she surprises us every year,” he says, dismissing the doomsday talk of draught-climate change-someday-we-won’t-see-these-colors-ever-again that play on my mind far too often. “Never quite the same color as the year before.” I lost track of my word for the year sometime mid-year. Usually, that word is a daily meditation, but as one of my friends wrote to me, “Who but you would have dared to accept a word like ‘focus’ at a time like this?” She was right, sort of. Every time I really hit a groove, get into a long-term project, I get interrupted. A student at my door. An e-mail from the chancellor to which I have to respond right away. A text from one of the kids. A call from the...