Pop!

On Tuesday evening, I shot a champagne cork across a crowded room. My friends instinctively ducked, then laughed, standing up cautiously as they reached for a freshly filled glass.

The Meeting Place, my brand-new book, rested on the counter.

As I say in the book’s acknowledgments, “Writing may be a solitary task...but no one writes alone.” So I raised a glass to the people who championed this book and helped bring it into the world. They read early drafts, wept over my stories, and even took my kids to robotics when I was “in the zone.” At the end of the night, I asked them to sign the cover. I’ll never think of this book without thinking of them.

After four books, I’ve learned that my favorite part of “release day” is the photos. My text thread and inbox fill up with pictures of friends holding my book in their hands and grinning:

“It’s finally here!”
“Look what came in the mail today!”
“Looks like we’re ordering takeout. Mama’s reading tonight!”

I love these little glimpses of the book making its way into the lives of people I love.

My mom texted her reaction to chapter one:

“When I found out C.S. Lewis had seen a director for over a decade, I started to get serious about giving this whole thing a try. After all, I’d follow that man to Narnia and back.” Such a great line!!!

“Of course she loved that,” I thought. I remember countless hours in our two-toned minivan listening to her read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on family road trips.

Another friend told me, “I’ve bookmarked several places in the audiobook.” The most recent? The prayer, “Oh my God, please help.” Knowing my friend, I knew that bookmark came with blood.

Maybe this is what I love most about having a book in the world: I get to glimpse where it meets people. A shared line reminds me of a childhood road trip. A prayer gives language to a hard moment. A story becomes part of an ordinary evening at home.

And so, even though you may not be standing in my living room, I’m raising a glass to you.

Thank you for supporting my work. Everyone who has bought a book, tried a spiritual practice, sent an encouraging email, or recommended spiritual direction to a friend has buoyed my spirits and my writing.

The work is done. The book is yours now.

Here’s to you.

Cheers,
Laura

PART TWO: MEET YOUR DAY AGAIN

One of my favorite contemplative practices is the examen. Pair it with poetry? Yes, please. Here’s how.

The examen is a prayer of attention. In this prayer, we join God in looking back over our day, calling to mind moments of light and dark. Together, we trace God’s movements in the ordinary details of our lives.

In chapter 7 of The Meeting Place, I guide readers through an alternate examen practice: writing a poem. I share one of my own examen poems below and invite readers to use it as a springboard for their own.

Want to try?

Borrow the first stanza, then write your own observations—whatever they might be. Remember: all is welcome here, light and dark alike.

Drishti

My soul was shy
so my body led
the liturgy
of everyday prayer.

Snow fell on the fields
and I looked (a praise)
at ice droplets frozen
in the arc of their fall.

Soapy water
scalded my knuckles
as I scraped (a pardon)
at yolks on the plate.

The puppy came close
and I scratched (a plea)
under her soft
penny-colored ears.

I watered the plants.
I texted a friend.
I drank my cup of coffee
slowly.

Amen, amen, amen.

Your turn.

What poem is your life writing today?

PART THREE: SPIRITUAL DIRECTION UPDATE

I’ve made a small change to my website to make scheduling and payment for spiritual direction a little simpler.

If we currently meet for spiritual direction, please email me directly to schedule your next session.

On my website, click “Spiritual Direction” in the menu, scroll down to “Current Directees,” and select “Email Laura.”

If you’re new to spiritual direction, you’ll find more information about the practice—and how to begin—on that same page.

And, as always, if you have trouble finding your way around the new system, just email me. I’m happy to help.

I come to the garden alone / while the dew is still on the roses...

The old hymn is stuck in my head, but it’s a strange time to be thinking about flowers. On the other side of my office window, everything is brown: dried grasses, empty trees, piles of dog poop left proudly by the front door. It’s not a scene to make you sing, but I do it anyway.

And the voice I hear, falling on my ear, / the Son of God discloses.

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, and I’m thinking of him. I imagine Jesus entering the garden alone. In one garden, he sweats blood in agony; in the other, he listens to birdsong and wipes burial oil from his hands.

I’ll be thinking of him tomorrow when I lift my hair and receive the cross, a smear of ashes made from last year’s Palm Sunday fronds. “Remember you are dust,” the priest will say. “And to dust you will return.” Memento Mori. Remember your death.

And he walks with me, and he talks with me, / and he tells me I am his own.

The garden metaphor always orients me to Lent. We fast (pull weeds for good things to grow). We pray (water our lives with the nearness of God). We give (share the bounty of a harvest table). Sometimes we enter the garden with seed packs and a strategy; other times, we stumble in, sick of winter, kicking at piles of leaves. All is welcome; God is a good gardener.

I’d stay in the garden with Him / Tho’ the night around me be falling;

This year, may we stay close to Jesus. May we keep watch while he prays, bear witness when he’s struck, and put our shoulders under the cross when he stumbles. May we know him in his suffering and know him in his resurrection. (Phil 3:10). Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, one garden to the other. Whether Jesus walks to Calvary or Emmaus, we get the joy of staying by his side. Nothing could be better.

And the joy we share as we tarry there, / none other has ever known.

For resources for the holy season, visit laurakauffman.com.

Look for “Oregon Sunshine” in my new book, Ordinary Things (Dustlings Press, Dec 2025).

Oregon Sunshine 
Eriophyllum lanatum 
 
I have lived on the far side of the forest. 
I have lived on the cliff edge of the sea. 
Open mesa, fertile flatland, city boroughs, 
everywhere and nowhere at all, unrooted 
and free all my life. Oregon sunshine 
with shallow roots and an easy bloom,  
a plant a Portland gardener claims 
is easy to kill with too much kindness, 
best suited to live in the weedy stretch 
of a “nothing-will-grow-there parking strip.” 
 
On a hike in a boulder field, my lover  
bends to tighten the lace of my boot,  
a lace grown brittle with miles and mud.  
He speaks of mechanics—arches and insoles— 
as he kneels by my feet. I drift away 
for there, past the treeline, is a tuft of yellow, 
Oregon sunshine burning bright near the sky. 
My restless feet begin to itch. 
 
I have lived on the far side of the forest. 
I have lived on the cliff edge of the sea. 
But here, in this desolate place with you, 
I reach for a clump of nearby blooms 
to hang and dry and harvest and plant 
in the garden plot outside our window. 
 
From our bed, I’ll watch the seasons pass,  
thunderheads and hailstorms, sleepy sun 
and steady sky, and the roots of these seeds  
tucked here in my pocket will settle deep  
into verdant ground far from any parking strip.  
I reach for a second handful of blooms. 
I slip my hand into yours. 

“Plants and animals don’t fight the winter; they don’t pretend it’s not happening and attempt to carry on living the same lives that they lived in the summer. They prepare. They adapt. They perform extraordinary acts of metamorphosis to get them through.

Winter is a time of withdrawing from the world, maximising scant resources, carrying out acts of brutal efficiency and vanishing from sight; but that’s where the transformation occurs. Winter is not the death of the life cycle, but its crucible.”
― Katherine May, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times

It wasn’t what she imagined. When she boarded the fishing boat in Tromsø, pregnant and seasick, she had neon-green expectations. The pictures of the aurora were vivid and ethereal, bolts of light hovering over the passengers’ upturned faces. She knew it was an impractical trip, being so pregnant, but sometimes you have to chase the light, even if it means traveling to the darkest places on Earth.

Katherine May’s book, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times, is one long boat ride toward the light. She reframes winter — a season most of us try to “get through” — as a brutal gift. She doesn’t minimize the cold or ignore the dark; instead, she mines them.

After plunging into the icy ocean, she and her friends scream and laugh around a seaside campfire. On St. Lucy’s Day, she sidles into a church pew to watch a processional of girls, all dressed in white, walk down the aisle with candles on their heads. She sleeps longer. She eats heartier. She survives and, somehow, makes it seem beautiful.

When the captain called her to the deck, she expected the aurora to dazzle. But it didn’t. Even when she squinted, she couldn’t tell if she was seeing the phenomenon or a figment. “Seeing [the aurora] is an uncertain experience, almost an act of faith,” she writes. “I honestly don’t think I would have spotted them at all if I’d not been told they were there.”

Wintering tells me that beauty is there; it helps me spot the light in the winter sky. Perhaps this season is a brutal magic — a call to extended sleep, gentle candlelight, and bracing walks in the woods. Perhaps winter invites us to pour a cup of tea, settle into the quiet, and meet God in the fallow season.

Perhaps winter is an act of faith.