The Last Minute

--> “Since when have things been easy?” My dad said this to my mom while she ferociously unloaded the dishwasher. It’s been months of angry housework. The rest of us stayed out of the way. I sat in the dining room, staring at decades of photographs. Dust tickled the insides of my nose—my eyes watered and I sneezed. The memorial was in two days. **** Death never comes at a convenient time for the living. Even with months to brace for impact, knowing full well that someone is in that oily place between living and dead, grief’s seatbelt is a chokehold after the crash. My grandfather’s death was a year in slow motion. The stroke happened like most strokes – without apologies. That night on the phone he was still groggy, his voice muffled by an oxygen mask. Comfort came only in stirs of mumbled vowels. At least he was alive . People handed me this counterfeit hope regularly, watched me walk face first into a spider’s web and didn’t say anything at all.              The

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” -- Mahatma Ghandi  Because ministry is a competition Who can have the craziest, busiest life? Who can have children? Who can get married the fastest? Who gets the call first? Who passes all the ordination exams, has the most life experience, ministry experience, is the least sinful?  Seminary is a lot of "nananana boo boo I'm better and more equipped for this than you are!"  Someone in one of my classes told a group of students, at least three of us under 30, that she prays for the young people essentially because we don’t have the experience of ministry that she does and that we aren’t equipped with enough life experience to do the job right. I held up my end of the bargain as a sassy young person by rolling my eyes. At the same time this attitude that young people are ill-equipped to do the amazing things that ministry requires and be leaders in the chur

I hate that phrase and phrases like it. As if our emotions bear weight on us, tear at us physically. I have always struggled with that notion, finding it especially amidst writing that waxes poetic. I muscle with it, trying to discern how we could ever emote in units of measurement I am light and happy, our hearts are heavy, I feel a thousand pounds lighter, I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders... until I remember depression, how my body just didn't move, couldn't move. How everything screamed with a dull ache, from behind my eyes to the soles of my feet and light, porous precious light, made the marrow in my bones turn to lead. I've been feeling an unexpected heaviness, a pain crouched in the caverns of that place I might call a soul crying to be undone, let free, unchained. It isn't depression because as much as I want to stay in bed, there is a flicker of something still there. The flint and steel still spark, I still walk, heavily as it may be, to the ba

I can feel my body shutting down. Exhaustion is closing in, and I am struggling to stay awake. In two hours I will wake up itchy with worry.  It will settle comfortably for the night in the pockets of veins not yet occupied by things I have to remember to do. The truth is, I am stressed. It's been two days since school started again. I have never felt more out of place in a learning environment. Uncertainty appears suddenly in my vision, vitreous detachment, then it is usurped by the list . You know the one you make that never gets finished; by the time you've crossed something off another thing has been burned into flesh in its place. These are the things you really really promised to do. But not tonight, because there are other lists that come first.  I've had some terrible people experiences lately. They aren't by nature evil people, certainly human at their core, but I've let them in. Like the rhino whose attitude was soured by the sand sneakily left in his

I still don't know what this is. But I'm writing because I have words that bubble up inside like Tetris pieces. They build up if I don't direct them to a place to fit together. I had intended to make this about about the Plagues that have infested this summer. I intended to complain about how I found bedbugs in my mattress and everything I own no longer feels like my own, but instead the property of this infestation. One which has meandered even into my thoughts, a constant very breathing presence. I have nightmares. I'm not sleeping. I can feel things that aren't there. I'm still waking up every few hours and have a hard time falling asleep. Moments of apathy are the waxing moon of something inside me. It might be triggered by some past heartache, some fear of the impending future, anxiety over something I've said. But I'm going not going to talk about that either. The PCUSA didn't mean much to me growing up. I didn't know what a presbyter

I don't know what this is. I think I just wanted to organize my thoughts somewhere other than the messy paper journal I forget about most of the time. I have bad handwriting. Things I'm thinking about but have nothing to do with anything remotely relevant: Stream of consciousness is supposed to help organize thought, with disorganized writing. I hate the stress of procrastination. I try not to wait, but none the less it seems as though nothing falls together until right before hand. I am a planner by nature, I hate not knowing what's coming and I resemble a sweater unraveled by a loose string, a dying kite, a drowning sparrow when things don't go as planned . Learning spontaneity. I don't know if this is possible. The Last Minute came out of a desperate prayer. I'm out of work for the summer. This is something I am struggling to handle. I don't do well without a schedule. I don't like feeling useless. I have lots of things that need doing th