This writing refers to two pieces of legislation recently supported and signed into law by Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds. Senate File 538 prohibits medical personnel from providing gender-altering treatment for minors even if they have their parents’ permission. Senate File 482 requires transgender youth to use bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their biology at birth, providing separate facilities only with parents’ permission. … Continue reading What if…?
I sat on one of the folding chairs lining the mini-gym at the Y on a Saturday morning in January. First and second grade boys were earnestly enacting their version of basketball, my grandson among them. They’re not bad, considering their age. The leniency about traveling violations and a rule against stealing the ball enable them to enjoy the game as aggressively as their little … Continue reading Blood Connections
If the cold must remain then I can embrace it swaddle my limbs lace the boots walk into the woods where the silence penetrates my crusty surface and the chickadee pins it over my lips. I follow animal tracks to the river in search of eagles as creatures huddle under the disturbance. No luck there but the hoarfrost more than suffices as close examination has … Continue reading Winter’s Consolation
“I want it to go faster!” I told God in frustration, on a cold and wet day in Minnesota. I was driving our family van to my sister’s apartment after class. My outburst was not about the traffic that day. I was slogging my way through what would turn out to be eight years of study in seminary. I was attending part time because I … Continue reading My Times are in Your Hands
O Emmanuel, our king and our lawgiver, the hope of the nations and their Savior: Come and save us, O Lord our God. We rode the creaking van through rough non-streets of a squatters’ suburb. Once-villaged families sidle up to a city that is itself more sprawling village than metropolis. Here it is monochrome: red clay homes humping up from red clay ground, hope fashioned … Continue reading O Emmanuel
O King of the nations, and their desire, the cornerstone making both one: Come and save the human race, which you fashioned from clay. There is so much more to making than forming shapes. There is the character of clay, the knowing hand, the promise of an image. Love makes no demands on us except to yield to her devotion and find ourselves among her … Continue reading O King of Nations
O Dayspring, splendor of light eternal and sun of righteousness: Come and enlighten those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. You call me from the city scape and hearth to a spacious inner landscape, horizon unobscured, where I can watch the slow crescendo of the dawn. The steadiness, the sweet return of morning’s child, hope’s advent, mysterious, winsome one wins over the … Continue reading O Dayspring
O Key of David and scepter of the House of Israel, you open and no one can shut; you shut and no one can open: Come and lead the prisoners from the prison house, those who dwell in darkness and the shadow of death. I was content in the cloister, safe from wildness without until the day a door was left ajar. My heart escaped … Continue reading O Key of David
O Root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the peoples; before you kings will shut their mouths, to you the nations will make their prayer: Come and deliver us, and delay no longer. From the beginning You created more than things but hid in them a seed of Your life force, for Love cannot make only one, embedding life in life, from life. You … Continue reading O Root of Jesse
O Adonai, and leader of the House of Israel, who appeared to Moses in the fire and the burning bush and gave him the law on Sinai; Come and redeem us with an outstretched arm. When I dare approach with closed lips and open heart, a new sense is awakened: love. Still and real, textured with presence, heavy lightness, true. My ambitious mind attempts description, … Continue reading O Adonai
saint sinner seeker 