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

Here, Again I am at the shore of Lake Crystal, looking out over the expanse toward the island on a wintry November day. I can’t get there–the lake is beginning to get slushy, so a boat (if I had one) is not an option. But it’s not frozen, either–walking is also out of the question. Somehow, though, I know I need to get there. I know the water will hold me. I step gingerly out over the edge, and the water holds–like a glassy version of the flat escalators meant to carry weary travelers from one part of the airport to the other, I am slowly carried toward the island. Sometimes, I walk. Most of the way, though, I just watch as the island’s shores get closer and closer. I climb the bank, reach the island’s center. There are remnants of a fire, and I am warmed by its embers. Beside it, my sleeping bag, sitting atop a soft material–like a cloud, but solid. I climb in, wrap the warmth of the sleeping bag around me, securing the hood around my head.  And–look!--the trees here (but not o...

We’re at some kind of rally. The night before, my mom was using spray paint and old boxes to make signs the night before in our garage, while my sister and I ran through the sprinkler, shrieking. All I know for sure is I’m between 6 and 10 years of age, because my mom is alive and healthy, and we’re living in our second house. Now, in the crowded parking lot outside a building with a balcony, where a man will soon be giving a speech, she’s clutching each of us with one hand while my dad and Connie (my cousin who after my mom’s death would become a mother figure) carry the signs.  “He’s the best thing we’ve had since Kennedy,” my mom tells Connie while he’s speaking. “I can’t wait to vote for him.” I wish I could remember who we went to see, what the signs said.  “I’m going to try to go meet him,” my dad says after the speech. “I want to find out what he thinks about Cyprus.”  “You need to go up there and thank him for what he’s already said about Cyprus. That’s the way to...

  Make radiant the vesture of my soul. –Greek Orthodox Holy Monday Service On Palm Sunday, also American Easter, the day started with my three year old grandson throwing up a blue peep all over my shirt. It continued with my knocking my cell phone into the tub while trying to clean up everybody who had been affected by the earlier incident–a cell phone that was already on the brink of dying because it had been chucked too many times in angry outbursts by one of our children. The day ended on the floor of my 12-year-old son’s room, holding him while he raged, wept over trauma that will never leave his soul. On Holy Monday, I couldn’t find my Holy Week book, one of my prized possessions, a gift from my church when I was about 14. It has been years since I was able to experience Greek Orthodox Holy Week in person. I live three hours away from the closest Greek Orthodox church, and besides that, I left the church when I came out, and sealed the deal by marrying a woman.   Neverthe...

  I sit on a thick layer of brown, crumbling leaves, looking up at tight buds on a canopy of trees. Somehow, although the season is wrong, I know where I am, though I don’t know how I got here: there is no canoe in sight.  I’ve only ever been here in the winter, when Crystal Lake is thick with ice and it’s possible to make one’s way through deep snow to this tiny island, travel the circle of its shore, and walk back, all within a couple hours. I do this every year.  Today, it’s hazy, the sun sending thin rays of light through wispy fog. I’m wearing a light jacket and am comfortable enough, though I can feel the damp ground beneath me. Birdsong, loud and insistent, provides background music, until I hear the distinct call and response of cardinals, the only birds whose song I know for sure. I look around for a red wing, pink tail feathers–but the birds are hiding well.   Then, I hear a sudden, rapid rustling in the distance, and a doe appears, almost skidding to ...