Entre nosotras el mar
A love letter to Cuba and La Vigia A poet and an artist walk into a bar. No, this is not the beginning of a joke. The setting is Cuba. The time is the late 1980s and early 1990s, during what Fidel Castro dubs “the Special Period in the Time of Peace.” The Iron Curtain…
Creative Love (as the world burns)
How many different ways can you find to say I love you? Every night we perform the same ritual, my husband William and I. We may be in separate rooms or sitting side by side in bed. But we are both intent on our phones, scrolling through GIFs and plotting message threads that we share…
Pledging allegiance
I stand up behind the podium. I am addressing a meeting of the Rotary Club of Wake Forest, North Carolina, in the back room of a local cafeteria. The people in front of me are mostly white. They sit along the sides of long rectangular tables placed in cramped rows, their faces washed out by…
The Slaughter of Innocence
I was not there for the Slaughter of the Innocents. I was with the rest of the cast in the lounge that served as a green room—sitting on a comfy chair or on the floor with my legs stretched out in front of me. Doing homework, studying for exams. Chatting, singing Bob Dylan or Joni…
Upended Expectations
(for the beginning of the Epiphany season) After Jesus’ birth—which happened in Bethlehem of Judea, during the reign of Herod—astrologers from the East arrived in Jerusalem and asked, “Where is the newborn ruler of the Jews? We observed his star at its rising and have come to pay homage.”…. The star which they had observed…
Making something
What do you do when the world is burning. When you surface from uneasy dreams to find yourself in a house engulfed in flames, room gorged with smoke and fire alarm broken. When calls to your elected representatives–all Republicans, or not–are met with stock replies. When the words of your op-ed turn to ashes in…
Fiddling while Rome burns
OK, OK. So it wasn’t a fiddle that Nero played while the city of Rome went up in flames. It may have been a lyre, or a kithara, but definitely not a fiddle. The violin had yet to be invented. Nero was reportedly in nearby Antium when the fire broke out. He rushed to Rome and…
The gift of silence
How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is given.(“O Little Town of Bethlehem,” Phillips Brooks) I am stopped cold, in mid-sentence. At the top of my laptop screen a small black rectangle reads: Trying to connect…. Reconnecting…. I sit and wait to be reconnected with the personal hotspot on my iPhone. Wait for inspiration to…
Wondering and Wandering
December. Time of gathering darkness into which will be carried, bravely, the promise of light. Well, bravely—or not, as the case may be. The light will nevertheless return. I wonder as I wander It has to have been a woman who dreamed the words of the Appalachian folk carol into being. Walking outside under a…
What’s Love Got to Do with It?
“For a dollar,” the White man said to me, “I’ll testify that he was assaulting you.” My husband William was walking me into the public library where I frequently go to write. Newlyweds in our early 70s, we walked hand-in-hand as the automatic doors opened to let us in. We always walk hand-in-hand, because —…
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holy discomfort: Love letters from a reluctant Christian 