Do We Know all that's Hidden in the Pines?

soul keeping
Do We Know all that's Hidden in the Pines?

We woke up to a freckled fawn curled up underneath the backyard birdfeeder. The one among the volunteer sunflowers where the redbirds land and we chase the squirrels away. I was home visiting my folks and the newborn deer was asleep near the window behind Daddy’s puzzle table. He figured, sometime in the night, her mama jumped the fence laden with life and birthed her baby in the backyard. It seemed at first as though the doe might have abandoned her fragile fawn. The baby looked small, vulnerable, and alone against the wide blue sky. But scanning the horizon, Continue Reading

Fly Away Home (the art of moving)

Fly Away Home (the art of moving)

Planes are crossing in the skies and we are waving to our kids through the clouds from little rounded-corner windows. That is how I described this season of moving hearts to a friend of mine. Transitions are part of life for you and your family. Whether it is your child moving up to the next grade in school, leaving for college, coming home for the summer, getting married, or moving cross-country for a job, change is coming, and along with it opporunities for growth and adventure, for roots and wings. In the span of about 30 days, three of our Continue Reading

What I Learned this Spring (songwriter edition)

What I Learned
What I Learned this Spring (songwriter edition)

"The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming." Frederick Buechner At the close of each season, my friend Emily P. Freeman invites us to take a look back and share what we learned over at her house. Before we head into sunshiny summer, let's take Continue Reading

D is for Dark (an alphabet of autism and grace)

D is for Dark (an alphabet of autism and grace)

Listen to your lives for the sound of him. Search even in the dark for the light and the love and the life because they are there also, and we are known each one by name. Frederick Buechner I didn’t realize it at the time, but there was foreshadowing in that dark autumn moment. It was a bright and clear October day. After laughing at tree-climbing goats and taking photos with our faces in wooden cutouts of farm animals, we left the bright sunshine of the pumpkin patch for the hay maze. Unafraid, I went into the maze behind Continue Reading

Remembering the Total Solar Eclipse on Good Friday

soul keeping | pour
Remembering the Total Solar Eclipse on Good Friday

Last summer we headed for the path of totality. It was the middle of August when we set out for Sublimity in the pickup. It 's my favorite season here in Oregon: sunshine, cornflower skies, and fat blueberries, ripe and sweet in the dusty fields. We bought the cardboard glasses. We studied the maps. We gathered the supplies: big kids, hoodies, fraying quilts, chunky homemade Monster cookies, the good camera, and dark-roast coffee. Before the day fully dawned, clear and bright, we piled into the pickup and drove to an open field between farmlands. It felt like a party. Like Continue Reading