telling summer

She invited us to tell summer stories. I've been telling my summer stories for years now, to myself. Some of them I've rehearsed and rehearsed in my head, trying to capture all the details, get them perfect. We moved in the summers. It was not quite every second summer, but nearly that. Memories of summers…

Squirrel Chasers

Today, because I happen to have found it last night, and because it still makes me smile, I bring you a bit of creative non-fiction from five years ago. In Mississippi, the Eastern Gray Squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis, exists superfluously, a peripheral scampering on any given day. Most people simply accept it as inevitable, going through…

stop waiting

Emily reminds that making something entirely new is not the goal.  Cassie reminds that art-making is about working at it, not waiting for inspiration. I've been doing too much waiting lately. Waiting to feel I have a purpose, instead of simply doing things that I know -- even if I don't feel -- to be purposeful. Waiting to meet…

tips

Yesterday morning I found a mushroom like a white paper parasol for a tiny doll. Last night thunder which made the windows rattle repeatedly jolted me from the edge of sleep and forced me into mental inventories of the things in my room which could potentially fall off the shelves and break because of the shaking.…

because of your enemies

I teach them stout-hearted songs about the Lord who has promised to be with us wherever we go. "Do not be terrified! Do not be discouraged!" they sing, the words still strange in the mouths which rather recently learned to speak.  I have to tell them that screaming and singing are not the same thing after their…

beginning june

Zinnia plants, in rows, coming up in the garden. A dear friend, far away, engaged to be married. A rainbow in the mist of watering the zinnias. Brothers and father returned from a different far away. A yellow butterfly drinking the zinnia water. Everything in readiness to begin Vacation Bible School tomorrow; my part: music.…