Faith Gong: Singing an old song

It’s a difficult time for those who prioritize kind discourse and caring for others, who flinch at policies and rhetoric that seem designed to shock and divide further; these people stare at each other with desperate eyes and whisper, “What can we do? How can we help?”

I don’t know why birds so often show up in my life, and therefore in my writing. But they do, often serving as conduits for some sort of metaphor about life.

I have said it before, but here is what I’d like us all to know: You are allowed to change. That may seem obvious, but it is one thing to know about the inevitability of change, and another thing entirely to live the change. 

Our family recently enjoyed an epic trip to California — a trip that lasted two weeks and spanned 6,500 miles.

In an epic 6,500-mile trip to their old stomping grounds in California, Faith and Erick barely scratched the surface of their family history, but they did take their children to a very unusual house.

A couple of weeks ago, I spent the afternoon cleaning out the basement. Our basement is unfinished, cement floors and exposed beams, and it has become a repository of everything that we want out of sight. 

It begins with a faint flutter, like a rustle of paper. Enough to make you stop and listen, wondering if you might have imagined it. 

The eclipse took me by surprise on many fronts. We tend to think we’re so much more enlightened now, with our satellite photos and knowledge of astrophysics. But still, we struggle to find the words.

There are many innovations that I’d like to stuff back into Pandora’s box: social media, crop tops, and weapons of mass destruction come to mind. But as I enter the second half of my life, I’m determined to give change a chance, rather than have a reflexi … (read more)

My adventure of choice has nothing to do with hiking trails, rock faces, or trapezes. My favorite adventure with my children is to take them to breakfast at Haymaker Bun Co. 

After a season in which I delved into the difficult issues of middle age, change, and raising teenagers, perhaps it’s time for something a bit more hopeful.

One of the effects of our children getting older is the fragmenting of our family. That sounds dramatic, but although it sometimes makes me (and the youngest siblings) a bit wistful, I’ve come to see that It’s natural and inevitable.

Around the time he turned two years old, my son began noticing basketball hoops everywhere. Driving through town, we’d be startled by periodic shouts of “Basketball!” from the backseat. 

I’m not the type of mother who typically makes a big deal out of my children’s major life milestones. With five children, my brain simply lacks the capacity to keep track of when everyone first walked, talked, and lost their first tooth.

At the close of my last column, in September 2023, I announced that I’d be taking a brief sabbatical and expressed my hope that I’d return to writing early in 2024. Well, here I am!