A reading from the Holy Gospel according to Matthew: Jesus said to the chief priests and the elders of the people: “Hear another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a hedge around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a tower. Then he leased it to tenants and went on a journey. When vintage time drew near, he sent his servants to the tenants to obtain his produce. But the tenants seized the... Read more
When I am at pain, I seek beautiful things. Maybe this is my neurodivergence, but I think everyone does it to some extent. When I feel bad, I look for something beautiful to concentrate on. When I am in pain in the hospital or at the doctor’s office, I dissociate by looking at a flower in the wallpaper border or the privacy curtain if there is one, or a tree in the generic art they sometimes have on the... Read more
I want to write something about the horrific situation in Israel right now. I’ve been trying to write something for days. I’ve been typing and deleting for three days straight. I’ve been refreshing the page over and over again on social media and witnessing a new crop of horrors every time. I know there’s nothing I can possibly contribute to this. I’m sick at the thought that anything I say will come off as ignoring one facet of an impossible... Read more
Let’s say that I’ve been praying. Let’s say that I can’t be 100% sure that there’s a God at all, but I want there to be one, and I hope there is one, and I hope that that God is a God of Justice. Let’s say that I’ve chosen to believe in justice to the very hilt, and I’ve decided that that means a God of Justice can’t be very angry with a person who’s been severely hurt by a... Read more
There was a knock at the door. I could tell it was Jimmy because he’s a bit short, so all I could see through the pane on the door was a messy blond man bun. I knew his boy was with him because his boy always tags along, when Jimmy does his neighborhood rounds. When I opened the door, Jimmy prefaced by asking when a good time was to replace my spark plugs. I can always tell when... Read more
The last thing I wanted to see, when I got home, was that I had company, but I did. Jimmy’s boy was scooting up and down the sidewalk on his scooter. As soon as I parked, the boy scooted up. “Let’s look at the vegetables!” he demanded. The vegetables were almost gone for the year, and I was exhausted. I’d been hiking again, mourning my failures, talking to my grief, and ended up on a long trail up and downhill... Read more
If you’d told me in March of 2016 when I first got this blog, thinking that I was going to write about nature and the Stations of the Cross, that I would spend the next seven years ranting about what a bad person Donald Trump was and having devout Christians clutch their pearls at me for doing so, I would have laughed at you. But you would have been right. Oh I’ve written quite a bit about nature and a... Read more
I drove out to the lake– not the nice clean lake where I like to go swimming, but a nice muddy lake in a state park way out in the country in Ohio. I went there to sit with my grief. Adrienne went with me, which is rarer lately. She is very happy in school and having all kinds of new experiences, but asks that I respect her privacy for awhile and don’t tell too many funny stories. She doesn’t... Read more
It happened as I was driving through The Bottleneck. I was on my way to the food pantry, still sick as I told you about yesterday, and I don’t know if that will ever stop. I was in that fugue state that insomnia sometimes produces, where everything looks abstract, alien, like a collection of shapes instead of a familiar object. And I was trying to navigate the worst narrow street between me and the edge of my neighborhood. This is a... Read more
I went for another hike in the woods, because I am a failure. The weekend wasn’t good. We continue to circle the drain with Twitter algorithms in shambles and the spontaneous tips that make up between one and two thirds of my income nearly gone. We had to borrow from a friend to make rent. Adrienne’s box of birthday cake mix was bought as a present by a nice lady in the Buy Nothing group. I was sick and... Read more
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