Big Times in my Small Town

Small changes and small stories have been playing on the radio here in Westcliffe.  Here's a sample from last year's work.

Walking Beside

A year ago today, we said goodbye to Maci and sat with her, stroking her sweet head, until her heart stopped. Maci was the kind of dog who didn't mind walking at just your pace on a leash. Before I ever knew her, she had won a showmanship ribbon at the county fair. She was …

Sudden Changes and Slow Work

Everything can change so suddenly. About 11 p.m. on December 22, after a day of holiday visits with family, my kind and generous stepfather fell asleep behind the wheel, veered off the road and hit a tree head on. It was a powerful impact. He broke both arms, shattered a portion of his left leg. …

Heart to Earth

Today I wanted four legs to curl up underneath me, rest my head on the floor and sigh. This act, this slow and delicate ballet, requiring a certain nimblenss of joints and spirit, a particular depth of soul and spaciousness of body, this would be the way of entering the day entirely as myself. Yesterday, …

Found Wanting

What do I want? That's gotta be a trick question. Here's a little story about listening to my dreams. It was inspired by  the lovely community on A Beautiful Mess.

Against Hope: a found poem

Found poetry is created by taking words or phrases from an existing source and re-framing them in a new way, using them to say something of your own. It is a kind of literary collage. The poem below was crafted from a sermon I heard that was actually very hope-filled, but at the time I …

Neighbor

The stuff I never learned in suburbia.

In which I notice how Starbucks looks like Jesus

Dear brothers and sisters at American Family Association,      Thanks for taking the time to share your dissatisfaction with Starbucks’ position on diversity when it comes to same sex marriage. It’s clear you care about marriage, and I believe you want to see families and communities thrive.      That said, I respectfully disagree with your …

Walk on

Oswald Chambers had a good word based on Isaiah 40:31: " There is no thrill in walking; it is the test of all the stable qualities.... God does not say--Be Spiritual, but--'Walk before Me.'" In other words, we aren't made to live in the stratosphere of spiritual or emotional or physical experience. Most of life …

Hope Attacks

In which a big dream flops and an even bigger dream takes flight.