Our relationship with the stuff of our lives can be complicated. Look around the space where you are sitting. Whether it is an office or public space or bedroom, what fills the room? Where is it all made? Who made it? What are the stories that come with the stuff of your space? Depending on…
For over a year we met obstacles from all sides as we tried to get our six lender families on the same page for a date to go out to the farm. Some of us friends had joined our collective capital toward a peer-to-peer loan for a local farm and our ‘return on investment’ was…
As I was cleaning dishes at the kitchen sink, I overheard my 5-year-old daughter talking to my 2-year-old son. They were sitting at our little dining table, eating berries and toast. JoyAna’s enthusiastic and entertaining monologue had somehow pivoted from a princess-dinosaur story to the wonder of grapes to this: “Eli, did you know that…
Have you ever wondered about the compatibility of your own vocation, season, station in life and the invitation to a contemplative way in the world? In October 2018 I was in my early thirties, married for three years, having just welcomed our first baby six months earlier. I traveled to Mepkin Abbey, a Trappist Monastery…
The sun was setting as we wrapped up a delicious meal at a local park with some new family friends. A couple of the youngest daughters from the Ahmed family walked slowly by the side of my daughter, JoyAna, on her first attempt at riding a hoverboard. JoyAna’s body was shaking, her knees bent, as…
Our home has a Christ room. The room is simple, outfitted with an enormous depiction of Rembrandt’s “Return of the Prodigal Son,” and remains intentionally open for short-term stays of all kinds. We have hosted family members and friends (and friends of friends), kindred community-cultivators, monks and nuns, refugees, respite-seekers and people yearning for imaginative…
Learning the art of listening shapes us into creatures who love. Years ago, at around 6 p.m. every night, I sat in the lower bunk bed beside Junior. Every night, between dinner and bedtime, we shared that space; our bodies resting on the thin foam mattress while cricket sounds filled the air. It was 2010,…
Not too long ago, one of my dear friends traveled to Rome. Among many noteworthy moments, including an evening worship with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Pope Francis, he shared one ordinary experience that became the most spiritually profound of the entire trip. It was the moment he entered St. Peter’s Basilica. The church is…
Tony is a man of melody. He sang in the choir of Emmanuel Baptist Church many years ago, often sings to plants and my one-year-old son and dreams of one day hosting a radio program. He even sang a rendition of “Great is Thy Faithfulness” on stage at the Durham Performing Arts Center for a…
We bought a lemon tree a couple of years ago. Bonnie Sue Ellis came home with what appeared to be a scrawny seedling from friends at our neighborhood garden store. Bonnie is a strong, passionate, observant, prayerful, exuberant pillar of our community life. She is also the unchallenged maker of our sweat teas and salad…
My three-year-old daughter, JoyAna, loves the garden. She walks around smelling flowers, searching for worms and almost indiscriminately exclaiming, “Whoa, daddy, this is amazing.” Last week she got a hold of a red and yellow zinnia and, with all the free-spiritedness of an exuberant toddler, ran up and down the sidewalk unpetalling and tossing the…
In Psalm 130, we are taught to pray: “ I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in His word I hope. My soul waits for the Lord, more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.” When I pray this psalm, my imagination takes me to a…
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