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Could it be joy to be achingly myself? Could I at last see myself As I really am, Which is not as I believe myself to be, And laugh In recognition and embrace? Then could I let myself Be moved and shaped Into something I didn’t […]
What if the wild geese move silently across the sky, unnoticed by most behind the tall maples still green but soon to burn? Maybe the call is not always harsh and exciting but can be strangely undiscernible, caught only briefly and by chance (or was it?) […]
No more waiting now! Can’t you see it’s the waiting that’s killing you by stopping you from really living? There is nothing to wait for. It will not get any better than this and it won’t get worse. You will not become more certain of what […]
[Originally written to read at a Community Arts Night at the beginning of a new academic year at SSU where I work, but it’s also about all of us and why we keep going, keep coming together, keep searching for more… especially in these challenging and […]
I am fascinated and intrigued by the way in which the Covid19 global pandemic is an extraordinarily collective and yet simultaneously highly individual experience. I resonate deeply with many personal observations from friends and strangers about their experience, but also encounter greatly dissimilar perspectives and accounts […]
Everywhere the world is dancing. Two squirrels high in the treetops leap nimbly between branches, unafraid to fall. A ribbon of weather-bleached caution tape flutters gleefully in the breeze. At my feet, morning sun glints on the diamond shard of someone’s discarded revelry. I watch the […]
(written March 2020*) Symptoms are most severe in the old. First, on the tongue and lips the aching tang of salt water though it’s been years since you visited the ocean. Next, the heart begins to swell bigger and bigger until the body can no […]
Dear friends, there’s a lot going on right now. And it’s changing all the time! Each of us will be responding to this situation with the COVID-19 virus differently, struggling with different parts of it and not struggling with others, and as things change and develop […]
I’ve been woken by a dream that has me up in the middle of the night hen-pecking out these thoughts on my laptop, my route to the couch only detoured via the bathroom for comfort and the kettle for a hot toddy to soothe a scratchy […]
I know I’m not the only person gearing up for winter – some with glee, it seems, but the ones I’m most aware of, and among whose number I count myself, with some dread. And no wonder – the winters here are LOOOONG! With eleven experiences […]
You are the haunting owl cries rolling over a quiet olive grove when I cannot sleep You are the soft rain that begins to fall on a hot, still night You are the magic of fireflies in the dark grass, unexpectedly lightening my heart in its […]
“Do you miss England?” you ask, or “Does Canada feel like home?” and my tongue and heart twist in attempted response, always convoluted, shifting, the story I try to tell torn first between people, and also between where I am planted (through house, work, purpose, community) […]
How did these woods I’m walking survive such a winter? How can they ever hope to be resurrected from six months in the stranglehold of ice and snow, roots frozen solid in frost-bound earth, brittle branches bare of bud and bird? And how will we survive […]
To be clear, God, When I say “I am yours” What I really mean is this: “I am as much yours as I am able to be. And there’s something, yes, something in me That wants to be wholly yours.” For these three words spring up […]
And so gratitude grows up like a rose among the thorns. This is all there is. This one rose. This one sunlit window seat. This one painted mug filled with steaming coffee. This one warm moment to savour. Look around and all is barbed and spiny. […]
Gather me, Spirit. Gather me into this moment an hour of quiet and solitude an hour to set aside my phone and the addictive scrolling search for connection or meaning or distraction. Here I am. Gather me, Spirit. Gather me from my worries, from the lists […]
Hear this. I don’t care whether or not you believe in me. I believe in you. I don’t need you to protect my fragile sense of self by defending me, by ensuring I am the answer to every question, by twisting and distorting your precious soul […]
Never underestimate the power of a question. Don’t dismiss it as mere herald to the all-powerful answer, Or despise its uncertainty as feeble or unsafe. A good question is full of life. It bursts with the curiosity and promise of undiscovered worlds. Its key turns the […]
I say it because I’m with friendsand a couple of glasses of wine and laughterhave loosened my heartand my tongue: “Sometimes when a friend asks for prayer I think, I can’t. What if there’s no point in praying? What if there’s no God?” The smiles and […]
There is nothing remarkableabout this moment.The dryer just stopped its rhythmic turning,the low hum of the fridge continues,and I am sitting, feet up,on our red womb of a couch– warm and welcomingand bearing the marks of yearsof after-school snacks and TV suppers. And here we are,cups […]
I am not one. Though I claim a united frontThough I parade a single face.I am not one. Though I try to uncover “the real me”as if only one me deserves to exist, to be given air and space to grow.I am not one. There are […]
I don’t know how to spend these last few hours with you, because whatever we do it will never be enough. You, curled up warm on my lap, with your tail over your eyes and your smooth wet nose. You, now chirping and tilting your head […]
I slow my breath and my paddle to enter this place navigating carefully over submerged rocks into the sudden calm between wooded islands. Here hidden from the wind of the open lake there is silence occasional birdsong and the rhythmic drip of my upheld paddle now […]
Why does the crow perched somewhere above our tent in soaring pines gently kissed by morning’s first rays insist on waking us with his strange and raucous squawking? I think someone wise once told him he and his song are beautiful. And he believed it. (Deer […]
How can it be possible to cut out a part of me and send her to a corner of this wide country that I have never seen? Her dear warm body, which I know so well and hugged too tight, covered with too many kisses, is […]
A few people have asked me whether I have flashbacks of the moment I slipped from the cottage dock, dropped the kayak we were lowering into the water, and fell headlong (or rather hand-long) onto it, badly fracturing my radial head. And I don’t. It […]
I sleep To block out The dark I fear But you Gently wake me Take my hand Lead me Down Into the cool It is the magic moment Just before dawn When the sky Is no longer black But not yet light Holding Just a […]
Cold, sharp icicles unexpectedly radiate glory in the winter morning’s sun, transformed from mere frozen water – and sign of the season’s endless cycle of snow, melt, freeze – into a moment of brilliant beauty hidden in plain sight. “Those that have eyes to see…” […]
It’s always a privilege to get to share my thoughts and experiences with others – whether in a piece of writing or a talk – and always a significant journey for me to find out what it is I have to offer and want to share. This […]
Almost five months have passed since my first sharing of some end-of-day reflections in free verse; the practice has waxed and waned with the moon during that time; and I find myself wanting to share a few more with you. I am interested by the wide range of topics […]
This evening I am alone awake at home, pottering in the kitchen with my girl sleeping straight above my head through the low-raftered ceiling. A pot of homemade chicken stock sits waiting to be used, and this time I plan not to wait too long and […]
This is turning out to be a very looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong winter, and I was happy to be given the chance to process some of my thoughts and feelings about the season, its challenges and gifts, in my guest post for the Reflections on Darkness blog curated by […]
Well, I didn’t quite manage to get this up yesterday (just as I didn’t quite manage to make my advent wreath until the day after the first Sunday, and we aren’t quite managing to burn down our daily advent candle every day!), but shaking off some […]
Tomorrow marks the beginning of one of my favourite seasons of the church calendar: advent, the four weeks leading up to Christmas. I love the symbolism of light and darkness inherent in this time of year. I love the invitation to long and wait for what […]
Exactly a month ago today I started a new daily practice (inspired by a poetry reading by Brian Bartlett from his new book of days) which combines both an evening examen prayer and a short piece of writing at the end of every day. It is helping […]
I run alone. I run alone not because I am so fast that no-one can keep up. Nor because I run so far that others would give up and go home while I purposefully forged on. Nor to be alone with my brooding thoughts. No, I […]
1) Let your life get so busy with both the meaningful and meaningless that there is just no time for writing, even if you love it. In fact, don’t bother making time for any work – however creative and life-giving – apart from the work […]
Ten is a wonderful age. So was nine. And eight. And seven. Age three to about six? Not so much! Anyway, one of the things I love about watching my newly double-digited daughter develop is her growing self-awareness at this age, especially about how she wants […]
This week I seat myself on a high stool behind the coffee bar, facing the wall of windows that bring in winter’s fragile light, a steaming mug of rooibos chai between my cold palms. We begin with silence, and as I open the pages that […]
One day a woman lost a baby. The baby had not yet grown past the size of a large pea but already the woman loved it. The woman wasn’t even sure she wanted a baby, now, so many years after her first and only child, […]
I suppose there are a few reasons that one might cry at a children’s dance recital. I have been to a couple of recitals, for example, where I could have cried from how impersonal, mechanical, prematurely sexualized, commercialized – and therefore boring and joyless – much […]
I love my name. (Now) But I didn’t always. And that, in a nutshell, is why I’ve chosen to start a new blog space with a new-to-the-blogosphere but 39-years-old- today-to-me name! My lifetime journey of shifting feelings about my name – a story for […]