Monthly Archives: January 2026

The Contours of One’s Soul

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I like to watch the chickens when I buy their eggs from the farmer.  Even though I am placing my money in his tin, and counting back my change, I know this exchange is between me and those small birds.

Yesterday in Vermont, I bought a carton of eggs from some chickens.  The carton wouldn’t close; a tall, stately egg angled up the corner.  Inside, the orbs, with their varied hues and sizes, sat in each preformed cup, too unique to sit perfectly.  In the array of twelve, there was not one genuine, certifiable medium.  The eggs were a cosmos without uniformity, without conformity.  In the end, the lopsided, the wide, the pointy, the small, the round, and the jumbo-sized all came together to make my family’s breakfast.

A world without averages, a world without mediums, is a world without mediocrity. It is a world without boundaries, without hedges and barbed wire, a world where potential is determined by what is inside an individual, and beauty is determined by the delicate shades and contours of one’s soul.  It is a world where the greatest work of all is what is done and surrendered up for the good of others.

We have the ability to sustain and nourish each other.  The world could be a beautiful place, if we just understood that its fullness is meant for everyone. I want to be in that kind of carton.

The Cloud of Presence

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In loving memory of Iva LaRue

As the Israelites traveled through the desert wilderness, the presence of God was manifest in a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night.   Exodus 13:22

In the summer of 1982
God sat at a card table,
poodles at her ankles,
cocked cigarette in hand,
setting her nine cards 
in vast array.

The summer of '82 
was slow and hot and humid,
and we traveled through 
the days card by card,
pacing ourselves by
trumpeted proclamations
Let’s Make a Deal!
Wheeeeeel ooofff Fortune!
and the whispers of
Luke and Laura.

When the news ended,
when the last card played,
when the air was thick and stale,
and we were tired of each other,
I trudged away, smelling of smoke,
and entered my
quiet house.  If anyone
was there, they knew 
I had been with God.

Every morning, I’d return,
crossing the wasteland, 
my house to God’s,
to sit before the altar
of three channels
and eat toast to 
the happy banter of others
Good Morning, America.

The incense of tobacco,
bright and fragrant,
rose into the crisp
morning air, air 
cleansed by the
light of the moon.

Sometimes God thundered
about daughters-in-law.
Sometimes God quaked
about the silent phone line,
the boys who seldom called.
Sometimes God wept 
for the sins of the family,
and sometimes God spoke
in a still small voice,
It’s going to be ok, honey
Oh baby, I’m so very sorry

An ember by night,
the Cloud of Presence by day,
In the wandering wilderness
of that season,
God Was.

After the Storm

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It snowed steadily all night, and the morning
has dawned bright and brilliant and blue.
Everything angular and known is softened or buried,
Familiar pathways have vanished under an expanse
that extends to the edges of my horizon.
To this strange and beautiful place I bring
the only thing I have, the only thing I’ll ever have:
Hope and wonder and the warmth of my being.