Wind is rattling in the range hood and the rain is drumming a brisk rhythm on the shingles. I mindlessly tap out the beat with my fingertips on my chest. I was a wide-eyed kid, when I lovingly nicknamed this island “windy Whidbey,” and so it has been since I can remember.  The bones of …

Prairie grasses bend west toward the sea and I lean with them, tilting my head. My shins brush up against the tiny yellow flowers that are reaching out across the path and into the sunset. Birds flit from where I tread and little crawling things scurry into the crackling underbrush. I hear their retreat and …

The weak morning light of winter is reaching through my semi-circle windows, casting shimmery, half-sun shapes on the wall. I huddle under a blanket in the corner of the couch as my fingertips reverently trace the familiar lines of ancient text, the beginning pages of the Torah. Nestled within this creation narrative, I close my …

The first day of my residency as an Emergency Department nurse was over a decade ago now, but it is a seal upon crimson wax, forever imprinted in my memory. It was the day I witnessed my first death, the true marking of my transition from childhood to adulthood. I was fidgety with nervous excitement …

Written two years ago (Autumn of 2019), with some recent edits. Stooping over the stovetop, I was cooking dinner and lost in my own ambling thoughts. There was a picture pinned to the side of the fridge, drawn by my curious, creative, imaginative 5-year old. In a moment of sacred wonder and clarity it caught …

I am fond of autumn and spring. They are the transition seasons, and my soul lives, and moves, and breathes in the in-betweens. The tension of the “almost,” but “not quite yet.” In the space between black and white. I do not see a blended grey, but an array of color, variation, possibility that exists …

On a clear, early December day we piled into the car with the fading glow of the 4pm sunset. The dwindling light was winking between branches and spilling out onto brambles dotted with snowberries. The final wildflowers of summer in their death throes, clothed in sparkling frost. Delicate Queen Anne’s lace lined the roadway, arrayed …

I have a thing for rocks. It’s early autumn, and the kids and I are having a homeschool day at the beach with scattered books on blankets and hands exploring and learning in nature. Summer in the PNW, though it is never long enough, is a glorious sight to behold with perfect temperatures, zero humidity, …

It’s more than a little ironic that the commencement of quarantine held the period of Lent. Many had just comically chosen to give up coffee, sugar, social media, etc. before entering this season, where more than we could have imagined was unexpectedly stripped away. And now we have marched through Lent right up into Holy …

In our digital age, and certainly in the wake of COVID-19, most of our interactions with those outside of our own households are happening via text, social media, email, phone call, video chat, etc. And this is the distressing reality that we are all witnessing: our current forms of communication have lost the necessary art …