Category: nonfiction
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Show Me the Fire in Your Heart & I Will Show You Mine
People are reasoned, while God is mad. They love only beauty; who knows what God loves? – Annie Dillard Who knew hayfever and heat could be so incapacitating? I have been languishing, lazy and lethargic in this heat; my very bones seem to have taken on weight and any attempt at movement or even mental…
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Who.
Even now I wonder: if I meet God, will he take and hold my bare hand in his and focus his eye on my palm, and kindle that spot and let me burn? But no. It is I who misunderstood everything and let everybody down. God, I am sorry I ran from you. I am…
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Suffering in the Presence of God
Isaiah 26:16-17: Lord, in distress we searched for you. We prayed beneath the burden of your discipline. Just as a pregnant woman writhes and cries out in pain as she gives birth, so were we in your presence, Lord. Though harsh, these words offer comfort and clarity in a place of sorrow. I hear often…
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The Darkness of God
We travelers, walking to the sun, can’t see Ahead, but looking back the very light That blinded us shows us the way we came, Along which blessings now appear, risen As if from sightlessness to sight, and we, By blessing brightly lit, keep going toward That blessed light that yet to us is dark. –…
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Six Impossible Things
The White Queen: I’m just one hundred and one, five months and a day. Alice: I can’t believe that! The White Queen: Can’t you? Try again: draw a long breath, and shut your eyes. Alice: There’s no use trying. One can’t believe impossible things. The White Queen: I daresay you haven’t had much practice. When I was your age, I always…
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Learning to Lean
The breaking began a year ago. God had spoken hard things; his words scalded me. He transitioned people out of my life, one after the next—friends, community, leaders, mentors—testing my true allegiance. He called me out of the harbor and into uncharted waters, placing me into circumstances with higher stakes than ever before. I grieved.…
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The Grace of Uncertainty
Well, it’s been a long few weeks. I’ve remained silent on current affairs, not out of indifference, but because of all I do not understand. I feel the shaking, I feel a dismantling within myself, a deconstruction of who I thought myself to be and all I thought was safe and secure. It started two…
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On Turning 27
Not, I’ll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee; Not untwist — slack they may be — these last strands of man In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can; Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be. – Gerard Manley Hopkins A week or so ago…
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A New Covenant for a New Day
Come, come, whoever you are, Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving, It doesn’t matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vow a hundred times, Come, come again, come. Rumi So I have broken my vow a hundred, a thousand times, but still the Lord says, “Come.” He has…
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The Blessing in the Breaking
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace; where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy. O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be…
Kathryn Kong 