When you grow up in a religious family, unless you have parents who actively model and discuss otherwise, chances are you’ll internalize the implicit and sometimes explicit message that men are better suited for leadership, women should be submissive, and all will be well. This is only reinforced by popular culture, but in a religious…
Spoken word/ music track from the Poor Clare album: Like the Tide. Listen below. . I want to know the god my own unbelieving self can believe in. The one who sides with justice, because there is no other side to take. Who doesn’t fit in holy books, because she is bigger than the bigots reciting…
Seattle traffic sucks. Day and night—all the time. Anyone who lives, goes to school, or works anywhere near the city complains about it. Whether they drive, bike, walk, ride the bus or watch it from their couch on King 5 news, the traffic brings people down… or in my case, ignites every suppressed fuse of…
“I feel like a planet with a lot of other planets stuck to me.” Rubina Doreen, Age 3.5 It was one of those off-hand preschool-aged musings said with a sigh in between throwing a tantrum, eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese, and testing out markers in her new Ninja Turtle coloring book. And for…
I have a good poker face. With three older brothers, it served me well through my childhood. I learned quickly that they wanted to get a reaction out of me. If their teasing didn’t seem to bug me, they would leave me alone. I learned to control my emotions by pushing them down, relaxing my…
A phone call for my husband. I call him, then go looking. He’s not in the den. Or the bedroom. A knock on the bathroom door gets only silence. I realize he may be ignoring me, so I call: “Gary, it’s a phone call from your work.” If he thinks it’s someone important who wants…
I love the Y. Early in the morning, almost empty, I’m the youngest one in the changing area and the first one in the water. They like to call me “little girl.” Could be derogatory. I choose to believe it’s endearing, that they think I am endearing. The water is cold at first. Slow wade…
You stood on the concourse, ready to depart with Diesels, red hoody, and me. But not me. She was awkward, overweight. “We’re going to Hawaii to think about this relationship,” you say, arm around this other version of myself as I stand on the curb, seeing you off. “Verdict upon return.” . Years later, I entered…
I regretted it as soon as the words were out of my mouth. People started to stare at me, but instead of calming down or apologizing I kept shouting angrily, frustration mingling with embarrassment. Here I was, a grown woman, yelling at a grocery store employee because a sign taped to the credit card machine…
I order my coffee and begin to mine my wallet for the elusive punch card. As a small line builds behind me, I shuffle through receipts, random bills, and coupons that I still hope to redeem even though they expired last November. A minute later, it surfaces. Just one more punch to go. I get…
Karen lives in a church based intentional community – almost a dozen unrelated people who have chosen to pool their resources and share a large crumbling mansion in the suburbs. One night this happened. Shadows pool so deeply at the bottom of the stairway that it would have been easy to miss the woman standing…
Cape Porpoise, Maine, 2007. The first snow has come. But why, I wonder, do they always speak of snow as blanketing, as if comforting, warm? Underneath its smooth spread surface I can only imagine a seering cold. On Saturday the ducks hunted for their lunch in icy shallows, pecking algae through a film of ice, advancing spectre.…
Spoken word/ music track from the Poor Clare EP: In Time. Listen below. If it’s true there is hope for a tree cut down, I will walk from Alaska down to Patagonia with an axe in one hand and seeds in the other, planting treehouses along the way because even vagabonds need a place…
This past year my family of six packed up and moved 10,132 miles from our beloved hometown of Seattle to the captivating East African island of Madagascar. Despite the novelty and wonder of living in such an amazing tropical locale (which is also one of the ten poorest countries in the world), I find that occasionally…
THE SHIRE SITS mid-mountain on the rise, home to my sweet hobbit parents. It’s there in the woods where I learned to make camp, play house, and build four walls with my imagination into any space available. A giant evergreen grows in front, jutting out from the ridge. It used to scare me in its…
Kindred 