Here is the world. Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid. ~Frederick Buechner This is not the next post I expected to write, and it’s certainly not the post I want to write. But you dear readers have followed my journey here in sunshine and in shade, and I feel the need to…
If there’s anything cozier than holing up in an Airstream during a thunderstorm, I’d like to know what it is. Better than the proverbial rain on a tin roof is the rhythmic tattoo of a downpour on a tin can camper. After three weeks of sunshine, a few days of showers have been a welcome…
The first three months of this year were filled to bursting with good things. School resumed with Hilary term in January, and although I was only taking one class (Italian Renaissance Art), it was every bit the challenge that my previous Oxford courses have led me to expect. I’m required to take half of my…
My dear friend Sarah had an enchanting post today about May Morning in Oxford. It’s a pageant I’ve always longed to witness, and one which Philip and I have promised ourselves we’ll experience in person one day. Reading about it in her words, luminous with her joy, made my heart ache a little. But I’ve…
I had the honor and pleasure of teaming up with illustrator Jonny Jimison for The Rabbit Room‘s collaborative Advent project pairing poets and artists. Jonny did a fantastic job illustrating my sonnet: Also, here’s something fun: a podcast I recorded with Joshua Klos of Refracted Reality. It’s an audio version of my essay “In Praise…
Hello, friends. I hope you’re each enjoying this second week of Advent. Second week already? How can it be? One of the interesting things about being a writer is that you tend to experience and observe life at the same time. I’ve generally got a commentary humming along in the back (oftentimes front!) of my…
Oh, friends. Can it really be Thanksgiving Eve already? I make no secret of how much I love this day–it’s like my house and I together waken to all the practical (and delightfully impractical!) goodness of the season. My rooms feel it as keenly as I do, eager to swing wide heart and doors to…
I gave into a cold last weekend. It had been pursuing me for days, ever since we got home from the yearly gathering of our tribe in Nashville, but it finally caught up with me. This meant, among other things, that we did not go to the boat for the weekend, and we did not…
Greetings, friends! I so appreciated the enthusiastic response to my “Proper Introductions” post on Gladys Taber last week! It was heart-warming to hear how many of you share an affection for her writings. She is such a gentling influence; decades after her death, her words continue to promote peace in an unsettling time and to…
I’m not quite ready to say goodbye to summer—although there are those who are enduring this Georgia heat along with me who’d think I’m absolutely crazy to say that! But it’s been a light-hearted (if somewhat madcap!) season of visits to and from dear ones across the country, of kindred spirits returning home from across…
I’ve shared it in this space before, but one of my very favorite Elizabeth Goudge passages comes from the 1936 A City of Bells. The dreamy child Henrietta has just returned from an exciting stint in Edwardian London, and, upon her homecoming, experiences a sort-of regathering of herself and her dreams: Henrietta, at heart a…
I had the privilege of presenting last weekend at the From Death Unto Life conference in Franklin, Tennessee, and one of my sessions was a short plenary on William Wordsworth’s immortal sonnet, “Surprised by Joy” (the poem from which C.S. Lewis took the title of his stupendously wonderful spiritual autobiography). I thought I’d share some…
I remember the way you talked about your daddy, How your eyes would dim when you said he was only 81. “He’d have lived to 100, if he hadn’t smoked.” I understand, now. I know the waking panic of 3 AM; The nauseating sense that a great mistake has been made— A wrong that must…
Looking back, I’ve always called it the Annus Mirabilis: my own little wonderful year. Its wonders consisted not in calamity (thank goodness!), nor were they even of a particularly earth-shattering nature. But it was a (mostly) happy year for me, dawning in the sudden strong goodness of abundant friendship, and closing with an appropriate dose…
I love naming things. I’ve named my car (Happiness Runs), my favorite picnic blanket (McIntosh) and our wireless portable speaker (Hank, for Henry Mancini, of course.) My guitar is Gilbert and my ukulele is Cordelia. Every time we acquire a new animal I spend days happily mulling over just exactly what they’re meant to be…
It is my pleasure to announce the winner of the drawing for a copy of Sally and Sarah Clarkson’s new book The Lifegiving Home: Linda, who describes home as a shelter of “grace-oriented” relationship (what a beautiful image!). Linda, if you will send me your mailing address via the secure Contact form, I will dispatch…
photo credit: Mark Geil I confess, I find it difficult to comprehend the mindset which relegates the consumption of hot tea to cold weather. Call it an addiction, but I down my daily quota year-round, whether, like today, I’m cozy by the fire with flurries flying outside, or dewy-faced on the front porch in the…
The rain was coursing in rivulets down the windows of my den, pounding on the roof with a rhythm that only emphasized the coziness within. Sarah Clarkson and I were on our second pot of Yorkshire Gold, accompanied by the boon companions of candlelight and good books. Our flow of conversation, suspended only for another…
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