Category Archives: Uncategorized

Утро вечера мудренее Russian folktales proclaim morning’s superiority over evening. Morning is wiser than evening. I remind my sons to breathe when the stress mounts after 9 pm. Morning is wiser Morning is wiser. It will feel different in 8 hours after sleep. I know this for fact my father says during a dark moment.Continue reading “Solace of Time”

You don’t have to watch broadcast brutality. It rips a heart enough to know it happens. A friend sat in The Hague translating for the War Crimes Tribunal. “I’ll never fully shake that,” he told me later. But we broadcast Our War Crimes for all to see. Toddlers and grannies teens and young men. HeartsContinue reading “Hometown”

“I don’t want to reward that bad behavior. All they want is attention, but if I give it, we’ll never get over this hump.” A friend wondered aloud about how to deal with misbehaving toddlers. “I don’t want to just snuggle them up when they act like that.” I sighed. My dear, dear friend. IContinue reading “Come closer”

I miss the time before we all went inside and closed our doors.  I miss who we were two years ago.Innocent, unafraid,careless, hopeful, energetic and silly. I miss not knowingso many opinions from others. I miss lighthearted friendshipsunworried by stancesor beliefs. I miss sweet little girls and friendscurled up beside me on a Sunday morningbrimming with hugs andContinue reading “2 years unmoored”

At the center of every Venn diagram is a small sliver. It’s the place where all is true. In the simplest of Venn diagrams, with only two overlapping circles, that little sliver is the place for both. It is where both live. The longer we see it as a sliver, the smaller it seems. OnlyContinue reading “To live in the both”

I was twenty years old when I discovered my desire to look away, to judge, and to control. And I was twenty years old when I decided to abolish it. There are split second moments in life that are so meaningful, they never leave you. This was one of them. The year was 1996. TheContinue reading “To not look away”

One of the most austere places of contemplative prayer on earth for Orthodox Christians is the Holy Mountain, Mount Athos. It is a peninsula in Greece filled with many beautiful ancient monasteries that have functioned for centuries, housing pious men of prayer. These men live in community and also as hermits, committed to a deepContinue reading “To be uncomfortable”

I’ve been raising sons for 19 years now. There’s this thing that happens. I know it well. One brother (often it’s the older or larger of a pair, but not always) begins covertly, out of my earshot, picking on the other. It’s lots of little things. Teasing, stealing a toy or favorite piece of clothing,Continue reading “On what I’ve learned”

It took me twelve years to finish my MA and PhD. Far too long by university standards, but it happened despite the rules. It happened because I was on leave of absence for two of those years. Those years didn’t count towards the ticking time clock. Ten years is when time runs out. I wasn’tContinue reading “What if we aren’t waiting?”

I think it’s more than seven weeks so far. I’ve actually lost count of the days we’ve been sheltering at home in a pandemic, keeping prayerful (and sometimes not-so-prayerful) watch, as we await the days when life might return to normal. We have no idea when that will be. Maybe soon. Maybe not. We’ve reachedContinue reading “On our humanity and our duty to savor”