I went to visit the burn site tonight, just as dusk was coming on. A part of me didn’t want to, so I could always remember the house as I’d seen it last fall. I’d stopped to paint a watercolour of it, me perched on a folding chair beside the road. I didn’t know that would be my last chance.

I’d loved the abandoned Red House ever since my friend Lael told me about it and I visited it two years ago, shortly after I moved to Langley. It was only ten minutes’ drive from my house, in Glen Valley. Though the house was falling apart, it was still beloved by locals, a landmark. The first fall I was here, I carved the house into my pumpkin. The second fall, I wrote a story about it for my church ‘zine, the house as a metaphor for my own life.

Then, my friend Amelia texted me from New Zealand this morning with a CBC article saying the house had burned down. “What does it mean?” she wrote. I thought about it the whole long drive to church.

“This either means my hopes are dead, or they’re going to rise again like a phoenix,” I told someone after the service.

“Or maybe it’s just not a sign,” she said.

“Of course it’s a sign. Everything’s about me.”

A writer’s prerogative, to find personal meaning everywhere. But how could it not mean something, my favourite house on the mainland burning to the ground the month before I move?

Either way, I had to go and pay my final respects. I drove down beside the river as a train rattled past, then turned off into the countryside. The house lived its final years on a turf farm, a perfect smooth sea of green across from a Christmas tree farm. It used to stand out in contrast to the grass, faded red paint and dark vacant windows. But tonight it rose from the field as black fretwork, the right peak leaning to one side like the mast on a wrecked ship.

I pulled over into the little curve in the road made for all who stopped to love the house from afar. I turned off the engine and hung on my car door, staring. Sheep shouted from a nearby field and the sound of a TV crackled down a farm driveway. The farmhouse way at the other end of the field was full of yellow windowlight.

A white pickup drove slowly down the road; I knew the driver was looking at the ruins too. It pulled into a driveway then doubled back. “It’s gone!” a man called out to me sadly as he drove past. “Nooo!” I replied.

The house was truly gutted, not even a window or door discernible anymore. Built 130 years ago, it held nine children at first then generations more, still a home even when I was a child. And now it was all charred, frail as the oak leaves scattered on the turf in front of me. “You hung on a long time, Little Red House,” I said. “You tried real hard. It’s not your fault.”

Then I was crying. I thought of the turf fields closing over the foundation of the house as if it had never been there. I thought of the song we’d sung at church today, “The House of God, Forever”, and the green pastures where a lasting house waits.

The house had reminded me of a favourite book from childhood, The Little House, in which a red house is swallowed by a city and abandoned, but is eventually found and loved and moved back to the countryside where it belongs.

This isn’t the fate of all abandoned things. Some never get restored, and the memory of them is brief. Yet the Red House was adored for decades even as it fell apart. “A lot of people loved you,” I told it. “So I guess it was worth it.”

I shed a few good tears on my way back home, listening to a song I’d always linked with the Red House. In my driveway I watched a video of the fire. In it, the house looks strangely like my jack o’ lantern. The flames surge up, turning everything gold. For the last time, the windows are lit, as if at a party the whole town was invited to.

Practicing Sabbath

“I do know... how to be idle and blessed”

~Mary Oliver

By the slow brown river
I dangle my feet from the bank
like a toddler
waiting to be served.

In the sand beneath the cottonwoods
grow the common weeds.

Blackberry is a weed, but every berry shines
like a hundred eyes.
Tansy is a weed, but look how many gold medallions
it is awarded by the sun.

This white one too—
I do not know its name, and yet it moves
inside the breeze
like someone touched
by their beloved.

When the ordinary lawn’s mown grass grows
to its full height along this shore,
it is tassled with seeds,
pale and plumed
as wheat.

So I repent of hurrying.
So I become
useless
and unknown.

I have bowed my head to all
that must be done, to messages that march
even now in rows, armoured with urgency.

This is how I know that I belong.
This is how I measure out my days.

But each summer brief weeds
still unspool, flagrant good-for-nothings,
cropless waste of space, festival of bees.
No one questions them, no one
hurries them into an office
down the hall.

Theirs is the peace
of being as they came.

So I too will hold myself
up to the sun. I too will watch
the wind
for a long while,
listen to it clattering
the leaves.

I will be idle and blessed,
do nothing more
than witness
this excess
and wash my hands in it.

The river takes its own sweet time.

Our last rebellion
is rest.


Now that my grad school classes are done, I’m trying to get back into the practice of regular Sabbath. Starting today! I used to regularly claim “anti-social Sundays” to drive through the countryside to my favourite café, where I would reflect, read, and write. It made all the difference to have that still oasis in the week, even for this extrovert. But in grad school, margin has been basically nonexistent.

I’ve been worn thin through five years of prereqs then grad school. I find myself longing for a deeper rest for my soul than my phone can provide. I know I want to be a person with a still, reflective core, someone who responds out of peace rather than reacts compulsively. I don’t want to have to always prove my worth.

But the tyranny of the “shoulds” is hard to shake. I feel positively rebellious taking a whole day to just delight in the world God has made. I’m trying to enjoy it as rebellion, feel mischievous and wild, uncontrolled by modern life. For one day at least. Mary Oliver’s line about “idle and blessed” feels like a Sabbath manifesto.

“Practice” can mean a regular discipline, or it can mean to try and get better at something. In this case, it’s both. Today I kept reaching for my phone and had to remind myself to just be present. Check in how my body is feeling. Think some poem-y thoughts. Notice a bird on the path, a rabbit scuttling away. Look up at the sunset catching in the trees. This poem came from my favourite moment of the day, just sitting on the bank of the Fraser River with no one else in sight, staring at an ordinary patch of weeds, witnessing it.

P.S. Someone recently gave me a camera, so I’m trying to practice photography too!

“Will the die let us go in?”

Jer rolls the die into the cardboard lid of a board game box. “Five! Yes!”

I turn my car right, into the beach parking lot. We’re celebrating our 40th birthday a couple weeks late, since I live on the mainland, my twin on the island. But now I’m back on the island. We couldn’t come up with any crazy ideas, so we do what any 40-yr.-old adults should: outsource our decisions to fate. I’m driving based on whatever Jer shakes. Numbers 1-2 mean turn left, 3-4 go straight, and 5-6 turn right (unless there’s only left and right, then it’s split 1-3/4-6).

We’ve already been taken to the corner store near where we grew up, where we had our first Slurpees as kids and bought bus tickets at as teens. We shook for our flavours; the kids getting Slurpees shot us weird looks. Out of a dozen options, Jer got Doctor Pepper then Citrus Burst, and I got Citrus Burst then Doctor Pepper. “I can’t believe it!”

Turns out Citrus Burst and Doctor Pepper aren’t a great combo, whichever one comes first, and brain freeze still exists.

* * *

“You have a twin?”

This fact always gets an immediate response. People are curious about what it was like to have a womb-mate, to grow up one of a set.

“I always tell them it’s just like growing up with a sibling the same age as you,” Jer says.

In other words, no, we don’t read each other’s minds or finish each other’s sentences. We’re fraternal, anyways, no more shared DNA than any other sibling set. Jer’s almost a foot taller than me (a true monster), but I have stronger eyesight. His eyes are hazel, mine blue, but we both have curly hair.

Maybe sometimes fraternal twins differentiate even more than other siblings. In elementary school, Jer always finished his math way before me. While I slogged away at my times tables, I’d glance across the classroom at Jer in his free time era, playing Carmen SanDiego like a king. But I was the one who drew butterflies and princesses and kidnapped children (don’t worry, no basis in reality), and wrote all kinds of stories and poems.

Over time, we solidified into our roles: I was creative and emotional, Jer was analytical and rational. We both liked to read, but I read Victorian novels and poetry while Jer read science fiction. There were times we fought a lot, as some choice journal entries from age 11 reveal.

In our early adulthood, we didn’t seem to have much in common. Jer got his degree in computer science; I got mine in creative writing. We got along fine, but we had different friends, different interests, different ways of being. We never dressed matching, never switched ourselves out for a sick day. We didn’t feel very twin-like at all.

* * *

“Oh, we’re going on the highway!” Jer says.

The die has been teasing us with the highway, taking us as far away as Mt. Doug Park, then looping us all the way back. We went in a few circles we thought we might not escape, but now we’re on the open road. We’re nervous about being stuck on the highway forever, so we decide to shake for exits. We exit past Wesley Road, where we lived when we were nine, just for a year. We both remember the ice storm that glazed all the bare trees so that every branch shone.

The die eventually takes us to the beach. A lesser-known one, east-facing with calm waters, Mt. Doug presiding over the bay. We visited it often as kids and dammed up the little stream flowing from the golf course. It’s high tide—Mom, who pored over the tide charts, never would have taken us at high tide—so Jer and I have to run along the sea wall to get to the beach.

When I’m with any of my siblings, a shared exploring urge emerges. We’re all curious, always wondering about the world around us. “Why do the rocks look like this? Where does that trail lead? Oh, I remember these stairs. What was this old foundation for, do you think? Do you remember how that mirage appears on the horizon sometimes and looks like cliffs? Is there a path at the end of the beach? We should walk farther and find out.”

We Snells have the ability to make fun out of almost anything, like when we made up a game called “Rods and Cones” at a recent sibling camping trip using pine cones and kindling. Jer and I find a log propped up that has a hole clean through and spend a while trying to throw stones through it. When it turns out to be pretty hard, we grab fistfuls of smaller stones and fling them at the log. “I got so many in that time! Nailed it!”

My dad said that when we were young, Jer would run to the end of the beach while I took my time walking slowly and picking up rocks and shells. I still collect rocks; this time, I’m searching for one to remember a client I’ll say goodbye to the next week. My friend Lael has taken up this practice and I think it’s a nice one. I choose a rock as close as I can to my client’s favourite colour. Years from now I probably won’t remember who I chose it for, amidst all the other stones, but in this moment I do.

* * *

Sometimes siblings grow further and further apart. Lives change; so do opinions and even personalities. Events happen that create distance. But Jer and I, we’ve grown closer together. I feel more like a twin now than I ever did before. I still can’t read his mind; I have no idea WHAT’S going on in there. But whenever we’re together, we make each other laugh and have wide-ranging intellectual and personal conversations.

How did things shift in this direction, I wonder?

“I think it started with celebrating our birthdays together,” I tell Jer.

I used to feel a bit annoyed by sharing a birthday, mostly because we often wanted to do different things. And as an enneagram 4, I like to be special, so sharing birthday glory was never my favourite. We always had a family birthday in the evening with our parents and other siblings. But one year as adults, we decided to go out for birthday brunch together, just the two of us. The tradition stuck, and it became a regular point of connection for us, a recognition we share something unique. My desire to be special on my own became an enjoyment of being special together.

* * *

“Hello, can I order the twin pack of chicken?”

It has to be the twin pack. We’re getting chicken for the first time from the little chicken shack near the school we went to as kids. We’re no longer following the die’s authoritarianism, though Jer did say, “This is pretty easy; I could get used to taking orders from a die.”

We take the chicken to the nearby park beside the Gorge inlet, where we watched the trestle bridge burn up as kids. After the chicken, we get ice cream from across the road. “Let’s walk down to the school,” I say.

It’s just around the corner, a church with a tall square steeple. Here’s where my parents got married, too. I used to sit on the steps under that steeple with girls who ate Mr. Noodles raw and clacked little plastic clackers—things we once considered cool. In the old school yard, Jer and I eat our ice cream and talk about what games we played, who we hung out with, what we know of where they are now. Some of them we still know; others we have no idea about. A couple have already died.

Everything is smaller now, as it always is. Everything slightly warped, not quite the same. And yet, we remember—Go Go Stop, Mother, May I?, What Time is it, Mr. Wolf?

“Didn’t Jordan move to New Zealand?”

“Remember that Jon lived down the street?”

“Where’s that school where they used to make fun of us for dressing like blue Smurfs?”

We’re not the same person, not even close. But we share so many of the same memories. And it seems like over time, we’ve become more similar. I’m more logical and balanced than I was and Jer’s become more emotional and relational. Not only that, but we’ve discovered how similar we already were. We both love books and ideas—”It’s only 10 AM and we’re already talking about whether humans have free will?”—even though we have lots of different beliefs. We’re both easy-going in some ways, conscientious in others. We both enjoy quirky humour, appreciate beauty, and notice the world around us. There are endless things to discuss. And maybe we appreciate our differences more, too.

We’ve always been twins. It kinda is a cool thing to be. It just took us a few years and a few throws of the die to realize it.

The Fraser Valley, where I’ve lived for two years, has its own beauty of gentle farm fields with mountains etched in the background. I love when the first fall snow sifts onto the peaks, the low fields full of pumpkins and corn. When the light sinks over the Fraser River, vast murders of crows fly home to Burnaby. I walk on dykes between cranberry fields and watch trains rumble along the river. There’s a softness to it all, wide skies and plenty of light.

But I miss the ocean; I miss the old forests. Back on the island for the weekend, I lay on the shore of Iron Mine Bay, pressed into the warm, gravelly sand. I collected special rocks: ringed with white, flecked with red, or glittering with mica, something I’ve done since childhood. I dug my feet into cold sand in cold water and let the waves rush around my ankles. The Olympic Mountains paraded along the horizon, across the Juan de Fuca strait. On a little island we reached at low tide, windbent firs and pines were draped with trailing lichen. Nothing feels so particular to the island as dry, rocky outcroppings with stunted trees, where wildflowers flock every spring.

I grew up in a dramatic landscape, nothing subtle about it. (I guess I came by my own drama honestly.) I wonder how much landscape matters to people now, when we spend so much time indoors. It seems some people could be just as happy anywhere. I’m always curious to see somewhere new, to learn the flora and fauna. But after too long without the ocean and the deep woods, I start to feel less like myself. Part of me abides with my “sweet, especial scenes” of home.

Everything is just so open here. The landscape feels too domesticated. The Fraser Valley isn’t quite as tame as the Dutch landscape, where every inch is trimmed and controlled, but with a strong Dutch influence (plenty of dykes and tulips), it has something of that flavour. It’s combed out and slicked down. Here I lose touch with mystery, with the unknown, even with danger.

On the wild west coast, ocean and forest can kill you plenty of different ways. Cougars and bears, riptides and hypothermia, falling trees and rogue waves—choose your own adventure. In childhood I learned to respect the power of nature, to bow humbly when I entered its realm. I still want hidden things—deep waters and deep roots. I want wave spray and cliff edge and whales goofing off way out.

The island can be gentle too, waves on a calm day breathing over and over, spring sun on my skin, stones smooth in my hand, everything telling me this is where I belong. Yes, yes, I know. Even if I dally in the valley for a little while, I’ll always return to this.

These days it feels like every other conversation I have is about A.I.—A.I. and art, A.I. and computer programming, A.I. and plagiarism, and of course, A.I. and therapy. Anecdotally, it’s been difficult recently for even licensed therapists (let alone us lowly interns) to get new and even returning clients in. My own theory is that economic challenges are driving this, combined with a potent alternative: A.I. chat.

About ten percent of Canadians use A.I. for mental health care. Many of my friends—smart, reflective people—have told me they’ve consulted A.I. on personal topics. Heck, I’ve done it myself. So I’m sure that, when counselling is so pricey and gas and groceries are more important, many people are turning to A.I. for help. It’s free, but it’s costing us in ways we don’t always see.

It’s easy to scapegoat A.I. as the problem. And yes, it’s growing exponentially with few checks and balances. But A.I. is also a symptom of many sacrifices we already made to the tech gods at the cost of our humanity, sacrifices that prepared us for A.I. “relationships”.

We accepted that online groups could replace community.

We learned to “unfriend” people we didn’t like, cancel views we disagreed with, and ghost people who weren’t meeting our needs.

We accepted porn as a replacement for human intimacy.

We performed care by changing our profile filters, “liking” a cause, and using political buzzwords rather than making ourselves uncomfortable in complicated relationships.

We became used to text-based relationships and forgot what it’s like to be embodied humans eating, laughing, walking, even arguing together.

We chose what’s frictionless and serves our needs for immediate gratification over what takes work but shapes us in profound ways.

We chose tech distraction and soothing over sitting with difficult thoughts and feelings in solitude.

We became what sociologist Sherry Turkle calls “alone together”—never really together, and never really alone, phones always mediating our relationship with ourselves and with each other.

I’m guilty too of choosing the quick fix, the dopamine hit of my phone, over the messy work of being human. As I mentioned, I’ve consulted A.I. about a few personal things. And you know what—its insight isn’t all that off. It says some helpful stuff. Plus, it will never judge me. It scores better than therapists on empathy markers. It’s available 24/7 and never gets tired or annoyed or has a bad day. And, perhaps best of all, it’s free.

All these reasons and more make A.I. “therapy” so tempting. But these reasons are also why we should distrust it. Because we need friction to grow and change. We need to take risks in relationships. We need to be challenged to the point of discomfort. We need to be seen by people who might judge us, who sometimes have a bad day, who could reject us, who have their own needs, thoughts and feelings. Because when we get loved by a human, it costs them something. It’s a gift, because they could choose to respond differently. It’s not just a performance.

As a therapist-in-training, I’m not an empathy robot. I don’t have programmed responses. I have various internal reactions I may choose to share or not, not all of which are pleasant or predictable, even for me. Clients have different responses to how I respond to them, and this impacts me too. Sometimes I’m tired or hungry or frustrated. Sometimes I say the wrong thing. But all of this is how clients learn to relate to a real human being, one who is other. Our sessions are focused on them, but they’re still learning to relate to someone who is mysterious and not-them, an essential life skill.

And what happens in embodied sessions—the actual space between two people having what Martin Buber calls an I-Thou encounter—can be profound. The only way I can describe this is with words like “sacred” and “transcendent”. Sometimes a client takes a risk and reveals something deeply personal that surprises and moves me. Or they show me new tendrils of growth and hope that I feel honoured to witness.

There’s a powerful sense of presence in such moments, in this very real shared back-and-forth energy between us. It’s what we were made for: co-regulation, attachment, healing human harm through human care. And something more, something outside us, which I believe is God there as we encounter His image in each other.

These are all things A.I. can’t offer you, because A.I. isn’t human, as much as it may perform like a human. You will never encounter another’s complex soul through ChatGPT, even if it feels that way. The frustration, mystery, and transcendence will be exchanged for convenience. It will all be about YOU, and you’ll never be taken outside yourself. Yes, it will be easier. But at what cost?

You don’t have to go to therapy. I get it, it’s expensive. But please, go hang out with your friends. In the flesh. Go for a walk by the water. Get ice cream together. Tell them a secret or a joke. Be curious and ask them a question. Look in each other’s eyes. Take a risk to be a little bit more human, to see a little bit more of someone else and be seen. Enjoy all of this, because ChatGPT can’t do it for you.

Only you get to be human, only you get to know what love is, the beauty and pain of it. This is what it means to be alive. Don’t let Silicon Valley convince you otherwise. We will always need real relationships, not just the performance of them.

I. The City

“Las Vegas is like a giant mini golf,” Jennilee says as we stare across at the New York, New York hotel. It’s a bunch of skyscrapers smooshed together and tied up with a red rollercoaster screaming through the night. We’re staying at the neighbouring medieval-themed Excalibur; it looks like a mini golf castle and is just as empty of substance. One of the Vegas hotel architects said, “Some people think these are monuments but they’re not. They’re movie sets.” Big vacant spaces with glitzy façades, crammed with flashing slot machines. Everything on the surface, nothing underneath.

There may have been a time Vegas was glamorous, maybe after it became entertainment for the boom of Hoover dam workers and before Howard Hughes made it corporate, back in the era of mob bosses that Vegas seems so nostalgic for. Sinatra and neon lights. Now it’s discount glitz for people who want some glitter in their slog of nine-to-fives. There are a few girls in sequinned miniskirts and cowboy boots, some bachelorette parties, but most of the people are just ordinary-looking: tired families dragging their kids between attractions, tired gamblers smoking and fast-tapping at a Willy Wonka or Wizard of Oz-themed slot machine.

If New York is the city that never sleeps, Vegas is the city that never shuts up. Everything is lights and noise and overstimulation. The golden TRUMP tower (the only one I see named after someone) is no surprise; I’m sure he loves this place. It rises like a single finger, at once beckoning and insulting everyone.

I always said Vegas was the last place I’d want to go. As a Canadian I wonder if I should even be here, given the current situation between our countries. Many of my fellow citizens are boycotting travel to America. But why punish the innocent owners of mega hotels and casinos for the government’s choices? Someone’s gotta keep them in business.

In all seriousness, approximately 50% of my close friends are American, which makes it hard to hold a vendetta against the USA en masse. And when Jennilee proposed a hiking trip in the area over my reading break, I remembered my long-held desire to see desert and weird rock formations and said yes. Vegas came with the bargain.

I live in a touristy place, but nothing like this. I’ve always wondered what it must be like to grow up in Vegas, or to raise a family here. I try to probe beneath the surface of the service workers we encounter, but they’re busy, efficient, and implacable. I image the façade has to be thick in a place like this, the true self wrapped carefully and kept far away from the tourists.

Vegas is designed around the worst extremes of the American ethos: the belief that everything and everyone is made to order, designed for your pleasure alone. “Limbic capitalism” at its finest. A truck rolls down the Strip with a tented billboard: “Girls direct to you, 24/7”. Just like it’s Doordash. I think of Wendell Berry’s quote about sex (rough paraphrase): “Trying to draw the line where we are trying to draw it, between carelessness and brutality, is like calling falling flying until you hit the ground.”

Vegas offers just such a narcissistic rush. People used to flock here to watch nuclear tests, enjoying mushroom clouds at sunset, heedless of the fallout. But what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay there. And what happens in Vegas is a microcosm of what’s happening everywhere else. What’s supposedly all for our entertainment is using us for its own purposes. If Vegas is a giant minigolf, we’re the golf balls knocked around from one dopamine hit to the next.

II. The Desert

When we fly into Vegas at night, there’s such a stark line between the lights and the darkness we think at first there must be some kind of water nearby. But as we drive out of the city, we discover it’s just the border of the suburbs. And beyond? Desert, where the crops are sun and wind, harvested by vast fields of solar panels and windmills.

Las Vegas—the meadows. Who thinks of meadows anymore? They’ve vanished due to human activity, the artesian springs pumped dry. Now only the desert remains. And this is what we’ve come for. Just 20 minutes out of the city and you’re there: sagebrush, yucca, and arid hills.

I’m a child of the west coast, used to communing with trees thousands of years old. There the forest is thick with undergrowth, impossible to see beyond. Things are closed in, mysterious.

The desert is so different. There are mountains, but the landscape feels open, hard and clear. The canyons have their secrets too, like the one we hiked down for two hours to get to a hot spring that flows into the cold Colorado River. But when you get out in the open, the starkness is striking.

The desert is the opposite of made-to-order. It’s full of spikes and rocks, too hot or too cold, either drought or flash floods. Everything in the desert says, “Stay away!” It won’t cater to anybody, no matter how much money you have to drop. It’s just doing what it can to eke out its own life.

And yet, at moments—especially sunset, with Joshua trees silhouetted against pink and yellow or golden light turning up the sandstone stripes—it all still feels like a gift. Not about me, yet still something I get to witness. I can feel my chest opening with the huge landscape. My small grad school life of deadlines and cohort drama feels fleeting. There’s something ancient here I want to slow down and listen to. I think of the desert fathers and mothers and catch a glimpse of what drew them to such places.

For almost a decade I’ve thought of a conversation I had with my Uncle Daniel about the desert. He’s travelled the world, probably more than anyone else I know. I asked him what kind of landscape he likes the best. “The desert,” he said. “On the surface it can seem like there’s nothing happening, no life there, but if you look closer, there’s so much going on.” As he described desert flowers and snake tracks on a sand dune, I knew this was a word for me.

At the time I was going through a spiritual crisis brought on by a season in which I’d felt alone and abandoned by God. In the darkness it seemed like there were no signs of life. My uncle’s image of the desert—though he knew nothing of what was going on inside me—hit home. I knew I needed to be patient and look closer for what was happening. And sure enough, in a slow unfolding, I saw the fragile flowers begin to bloom even amidst the rocks.

Now, as I observe the desert I think of this conversation. I see primrose, mallow, paintbrush, desert sunflower, and even prickly pear cacti with buds not far from bloom. Bluebirds chase each other between yucca spikes. A ringtail (like a ferret with a raccoon tail) scampers over the rocks by a waterfall. An orange butterfly rests on the trail, flies ahead of us, then rests again.

There is life here, and also the solidity and simplicity of stone: red rock carved in wild shapes, brown mountains swept up from an ancient volcano, huge sandstone boulders scattered from forever ago, some of them carved with petroglyphs. When the rain sweeps through and soaks us in Red Rock Canyon, I think of Isaiah: “The desert and the parched land will be glad; the wilderness will rejoice and blossom.” I stand under the overhang of a massive boulder big as a house and watch the rain past its eaves quietly falling into the quiet desert. No neon lights will ever fill me like this.

Love Poem to Poetry

A week I’ve been not quite
alright and I want you,
who never say too much.
Soft-pawed you step around
the crystal flutes
I’m worried about shattering.
You sit looking away
from me and yet I know
you know I’m here.

People herd me, urgent
to arrive at explanations
for what I didn’t mean
my face to tell.

But you don’t rush.

You just curl up where this space
is in my chest,
and breathe.

You talk with words,
but of a different kind,
a half-remembered mother tongue.
Beauty is your only argument.

When we’ve sat awhile,
you sniff at some small thing
that flickers in the grass.
Then I look up from my lap
and see it too.
And we are still.

You set off down the path,
green-gold eyes
cast back at me.
Black pupils flex to let in
just the right amount of light.
You turn your head away
to go exactly where you must.
There’s no command
and yet I follow you.

The other night I tried to explain to a very logically-minded guy what’s up with poetry. That’s had me thinking about what I get from poems that I can’t get anywhere else. After a long week, I found myself longing for the spaciousness of poetry. It takes me on a gentle journey and I’m here for it. I can always feel myself start to slow down and my chest expand when I’m reading a good poem. So here’s my little Valentine to poetry this week. <3

The Crossing

A week of frost and sun
clarion on mountains strung with snow.
After so long waterlogged
I whistle fleet-footed through winter days.
To touch a frosted spiderweb
or the new green cedar tips
is to find a doorway
in the sleep of earthly things.

But every night thick fog
rises from the river, velvet drapes
brushed with dust in a lost room.
I push along the highway
with my beams on low.
I have never seen a dark like this;
even streetlights dissolve in it.

One evening when I drove across
a bridge that sailed full-cabled into cloud,
the last sun caught the mist and filled
it like a bulb with an orange glow.
And though I could not see
the northern mountains I had left behind,
the Fraser River curving
to the flatlands I was driving to,
for a moment as I hung between two shores,
the space was lit by what blindfolded me.

The weather has been strikingly sunny for a couple weeks now, transforming everyone in Vancouver from huddled curmudgeons to manic skiers and hikers sure this is their one shot at Vitamin D for years to come. My mood has shot up too, despite forgetting the extra time scraping frost adds to my morning routine. I love seeing the frost thicken on farm fields and trees (no snow this winter yet) and getting out for walks in delicate winter sun. But most mornings and evenings have also been extremely foggy—an odd combination of clear and clouded.

Recently I’ve been collecting some wisdom from people who’ve gone through grief or various struggles. One of my relatives recently told me, “The sorrow digs wells that can hold more joy.” I notice this theme in the stories I hear. For those who have let their grief be transformed—a painful process, certainly—there’s a deep capacity for joy, joy as a strength they return to again and again. Not in spite of the sorrow or to avoid it, but because of it.

I believe in Frankl’s assertion that the last freedom we have is our ability to choose how to respond to our circumstances. And I take that to mean that we can let loss harden us or we can become bigger through it, with a larger capacity for love, beauty, meaning, and delight. No easy task in a world that often seems to give us every reason to despair. But I’ve seen others choose it, in the face of terrible circumstances. Only we can choose who we want to become; no one else can make us grow. Not even our therapist!

In writing this poem I was thinking of the highs and lows of life and especially of transitions, all of which involve loss. In my own midlife transition I have a lot of uncertainty and fear of the unknown. I feel suspended on a bridge, unable to go backward but also so unsure about the opposite shore. The moment in this poem happened on my favourite Vancouver bridge, the Port Mann, and filled me with awe. I couldn’t see the other side but I was somehow traveling in a light created by the very thing that was causing my uncertainty. And if that isn’t worth a poem, I don’t know what is.

Who is not afraid of pure space—that breathtaking, empty space of an open door? But despite fear, one goes through to the room beyond. But in middle age, because of the false assumption that it is a period of decline, one interprets these life-signs, paradoxically, as signs of approaching death. Instead of facing them, one runs away… Anything rather than stand still and learn from them. One tries to cure the signs of growth: to exorcise them, as if they were devils, when really they might be angels of annunciation.

~Anne Morrow Lindbergh

Sunday morning at the café I used to drive to every Sunday the year before I left my island home. Pale sun casts shadows from bare fig trees through the windows onto me. It’s busy here, but a young mom offers me space at the table with her and her chatty three-year-old—also named Elizabeth. Then an older woman and her son-in-law join us, and we all share our stories. The young man—a Swiss geologist who studies climate change up north and says that like a surgeon he’s become inured to the signs of destruction and simply carries on. His MIL—a local who lives by the ocean, works in her garden, and walks her dogs: “There’s not much to say about me.” The young woman—a Ukrainian who left Kiev the first day of the war with her Turkish husband and her parents. She was pregnant with her daughter then, and now she has a second child.

“It’s too sunny,” says Elizabeth, pointing to the window hung with lavender.

“I have to shield my eyes,” the Swiss man says.

After all the rain, we’re too weak in the light.

The mother and her daughter leave first, then the MIL and SIL and I’m alone to write. I’ve come here to reflect on the new year. But after reading the Lindbergh passage in a devotional this morning, I realize that the new year is framed by the season of life I’m in. This year I’ll crest the Hill of 40, and I can’t untangle my hopes and fears for the new year from my hopes and fears for this time of life in general.

The wind blows cold across the airport’s open field, sending all the flags outside shuddering. The trailing vines stream out from hanging baskets like the tentacles of jellyfish. I wonder what this wind is blowing in. I listen for a voice inside the wind. But there’s so much unknown. And I’ve raged against letting go of the life I’ve hoped for. How can I already be in midlife without having lived so much of what they say youth’s for? Am I really expected to give up what never even began?

As I sit with where I am, I feel the truth of what Lindbergh says. I don’t want to be still and learn from this because it means accepting that the tides have turned. As if denying time or tide would make them slow for me. Yet I want to fill myself, my schedule, with distraction: appointments, conversations, messages to respond to, events to attend, anything that keeps off the chill of empty places I hoped would be filled by now. Midlife already feels like loss and narrowing. Why add to it?

An old man blows into the café, wrinkles scored deep in his cheeks. I tell him he can share my table too. He’s a gale of talk, as if I’m just someone to bluster words around rather than a person with thoughts of my own. Even when I tell him I’m going to write, he keeps muttering to himself as he reads the paper then calls a friend to keep on talking. Frederick Buechner says of a fictional chatterbox, “Words were the line that moored him to the world, I think, and he thought if ever the line should break, he’d be forever cast adrift.” We all have our means of filling emptiness.

I admit I’m afraid. Afraid that all this busyness is what keeps me valuable and without it I wouldn’t matter anymore. Afraid that if I clear the boulders and trash from the spring, no water will flow. Afraid that if I truly accept my life as it is, not as I long for it to be, the doors will all close and I’ll be shut inside an empty room alone.

But in the light of the new year I ask, “Who do I want to become?” I want to become a person with an inner spaciousness, a still centre even when the winds rise up. How else can I welcome anyone? There’s a sense of call to make room for the unknown, which may mean sitting with some emptiness. I thought yesterday of the need to “Marie Kondo” my inner life as I once did my home. To create space to listen, to become more of who I’m meant to be. Unclutter the distraction and the noise, the ceaseless self-filling so there’s space to see my life as it really is and welcome what might be. I’m driven by “next thing, next thing” but I want to be centred in each day’s simple gifts.

Even as I work toward my goals and grapple with life’s grief, I have the capability to see the beauty of the now. The poet’s gift. It’s in me, I just don’t give it much room to breathe. When I slow down I find wonder and beauty easily enough. My thoughts shift then from annoyances, to-dos, and hot takes to a reflective way of taking in the world.

And in that place, even when I wonder what the point of my life is and think I’ve already seen the better part of it, I’m glad to be here. Even in an imperfect story in an imperfect world as my imperfect self.

The sun, cameo in a winter full of rain, is higher now and rests warm on my forehead like a benediction, a kiss. The wind blows. I don’t know what it takes or brings to me. But the sun remains and I’ll go out in it.

A Prayer in the Middle Years of Opportunity
(from Celtic Daily Prayer)

Lord, help me now to unclutter my life,
to organize myself in the direction of simplicity.
Lord, teach me to listen to my heart;
teach me to welcome change instead of fearing it.
Lord, I give You these stirrings inside me,
I give You my discontent,
I give You my restlessness,
I give You my doubt,
I give You my despair,
I give You all the longings I hold inside.
Help me to listen to these signs of change, of growth;
to listen seriously and follow where they lead
through the breathtaking empty space of an open door.

But Ahaz said, “I will not ask, and I will not put the Lord to the test.” Then Isaiah said, “Hear then, O House of David! Is it too little for you to weary mortals, that you weary my God also? Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign.”

~Isaiah 7:12-14

The Sign

I won’t ask for a sign.
I’ve been travelling
by my own lights
for far too long,
and I’ve grown good at it.
I wouldn’t put God out
with these minor requests.
My kingdom’s mine
and I don’t want to know
what the Divine
might plan for it.
I will not step out on the water,
not because I think
that I might drown,
but because I know I won’t,
and if I meet him there,
what waves might he take me through?
I will not test God.
I don’t want to know
what he could do,
and how that would test me.

2.

I declare that your steadfast love is established forever;
your faithfulness is as firm as the heavens.
You said, “I have made a covenant with my chosen one...”

~Psalm 89:2, 3

Covenant

I’ve always been one to start a thing
and not finish it. So many cross-stitch
and crochet projects from childhood left
undone, quilt squares I sewed when I was twelve
still separate in a box. French lessons
on an app, guitar I trifled with, an arch
I failed to build, running I ran from
after a month, even a moose hide I tried to tan
then buried when it proved too much for me.

Every year I say, this will be the one
I weave the loose ends in, I ascend
into some Type A paradise. Up early,
I’ll pray for half an hour, I’ll go for a walk,
I’ll pack my balanced lunch. I won’t look
at my phone. I won’t let emails slide
or leave anyone on read. I won’t make
promises that I can’t keep.

But I know myself.
I carry all that I can’t be
like a cardboard sign as I slouch down
the median, begging for some pity
from my friends. Just do it.
Just put on your running shoes,
just put a reminder in your phone.

How can it be so hard to grow?
Always I feel the gap between
what I am and what I could become.

But You are the same Lord
who loves me anyways. Who keeps
your end up anyways. As I breathe in
the stillness of this day, I think
whatever I become, I just want
to belong with You.

3.

Then Mary said, “Here I am, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

~Luke 1:38

The Seed

Always two choices when the voice
speaks from another world:
hide, or say, Here I am.
Those who tell of moments
such as these have details branded in.
You know this marked a full stop.
Then a new door opened
to a growing light.

Most storytellers are the ones
who walked through that door
and found their old lives
shucked, the kernels that remained
peeled and raw and gold.
We hear so little of the ones
who turned away, but now and then,
a story filters down. A fruit
cool in the hand that spilt
its juice into the rivers of the world.
The stained leaves used to cover
what was left.

But for her, the seed inside
blazed light instead of shame,
ripening with life instead of death.
Which voice we say yes to,
open to its promises,
defines us in the end.

After a very busy little while, I’ve had time to go back and catch up on the poems I meant to finish for the last three days of Advent. Writing these poems the past month was sometimes stressful but mostly a gift. No matter how ramshackle and slapdash they were, no matter if I was writing at 11 PM after a long day, I felt grateful to engage with the verses this way. I found myself returning to various themes, such as dark and light, God’s conviction, and wilderness. I enjoyed how each day’s passage brought different associations to mind and caused me to go deeper.

I was also reminded that poetry hasn’t abandoned me, despite me ignoring it for a rudely long time. As noted in Poem #2 here, I’m not known for my artistic consistency so I don’t imagine this is a renaissance. However, I’m encouraged to know I can still feel these stirrings in my heart and blow them into small flames when I give it a little time. Thank you for your patience and comments as I spammed your inboxes over the past month! I always enjoy hearing your feedback.

The spirit of the Lord God is upon me,
because the Lord has anointed me;
he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the broken-hearted,
to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners;
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour…

~Isaiah 61:1,2

I thought I would switch it up a little and share the liturgy I’ve been working on for counselling (and other types of helpers). There’s a little chapel at my practicum site where I start every morning by lighting a candle and praying this prayer, naming the clients I’ll see. The prayer directly references multiple verses in this chapter of Isaiah, so I felt it was fitting. I expect this to be a prayer that evolves over time, but for now it’s felt right. Both at the beginning of the day and the end of the day I have to entrust my clients to the God who shows up with this kind of hope and tenderness. All the work I’m doing and will do is only a small part of the work of the One who got there first and will be there long after me.

A Liturgy for Helpers

(Open hands)

Healer and Redeemer of us all,
as I open my heart to another in this place,
I open myself to You.
My own thoughts and feelings are many,
the dirt of the street still on my shoes.

(Turn hands over)

I place all I carry in Your care,
so in this small but sacred hour
I might attend to the one
who sits across from me.

You have brought them here, and I receive them—
their story, their fears, their joys, their sadness, their growth—
knowing I am trusted with their precious life.
I do not take this lightly, Lord.
Help me honour this gift.

I am humbled that You have chosen me
to carry Your grace to this person today.
Grant me courage and a tender heart
to love with wisdom and bravery.
Make me like a warm shelter in the cold,
the scent of water in an arid land,
a herald carrying good news:
beauty for ashes, joy for tears.

You have created all parts of this person:
body, mind, emotions, spirit, soul.
You care for them inside and out.
You have known and loved them before their birth.
They are fearfully and wonderfully made;
I know that full well.

I do not know what will emerge today, oh Lord.
Only You do.
Each person carries so much mystery.
Give me sight beyond the natural,
beyond my training or technique,
to see this person as you do, wounded
yet beautiful.

Spirit, reveal where there is healing
to be done, and help me enter in,
knowing only You can mend what is unseen.
Jesus, work through me to bring resurrection life.
Where walls are built that keep out what is good,
help me find doors.
Where walls are broken that were meant to protect,
help me rebuild.

Father, when I am weary,
strengthen me.
When I am overwhelmed,
help me rest in You.
When I am unsure,
be my clarity.

Remind me I do not need to know it all;
my words do not have to be perfect
or my insight supreme.
Sometimes it is enough to simply be
and to hold a gentle space for You.

In place of despair, bring meaning and hope.
In place of shame, bring restoration and glory.
In place of fear, bring deep, abiding peace.
Bind up the brokenhearted with Your own scarred hands.
May their very wounds become a frame
around Your grace.

Transform my own wounds too,
making me more human and more real,
so like You, Jesus, the place of my pain
can become a wellspring of life.

Even when it feels like nothing is happening,
I know You are at work and have brought us both here
for such a time as this.
I let go of the need to see change in the way I desire,
and trust Your timing and Your ways.

Our times are in Your hands.
So let me not use this time carelessly
but be aware that in loving this one You have sent,
I am planting seeds that may sprout soon
or perhaps many years from now.
Who knows how our paths may cross in this life
or the life to come?
Then we may see flowers growing
where there once was desert sand.

(Open hands)

Who You bring through my door, I receive,
knowing in this short time I have welcomed You.

(Turn hands over)

Who leaves through my door, I release,
knowing You alone can save
and You are watching over them.

Amen.

After those days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she remained in seclusion. She said, “This is what the Lord has done for me when he looked favourably on me and took away the disgrace I have endured among my people.”

~Luke 1:24-25

Disgrace

She was 16, and they made her
and the boyfriend stand
at the front of church
and apologize
for the small life nestled
in her, still unseen.

I learned
this is what you never
want to be: the girl
swollen in the high school
hall, whispers flickering
around her like St. Elmo’s fire.

Twenty years on,
half my friends have turned
from IUDs to IUIs
and crying in a Starbucks
over yet another
false start, whispered hope
that flickered out.

Turns out there’s no end
of ways the body can betray
desires, no end of ways
a girl can be disgraced.

And me? I’ve never wondered
even once if I might be more
than one.
Never got to asking
all that intricate machinery
to clog or unclog itself.

But there are lives I carry
in me still. Lives I did not create.
Lives that go unseen, stories
only I am ever told. And I know
they are no accident, that love
has brought them each into this world,
and they are a grace in it.

This was a hard scripture to write a poem for. Given my own current midlife musings, I don’t enjoy the concept of a woman (much less my namesake) being disgraced for not having children. I know that was the reality in gospel times, and is often the reality today. One of my friends who struggled with infertility for seven years commented that in the Bible, all the women who are infertile (or it could have been the men, though the shame falls on the women) become pregnant. There are no stories about women who long for children and don’t ever get them.

One of my favourite verses is from Isaiah: "Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband," says the LORD.” The passage goes on to talk about God being Israel’s husband and taking away her shame. Although it’s difficult to grapple with the Biblical emphasis on childbearing as a sign of God’s favour, it’s also clear that the primary family God gives us is spiritual.

Elizabeth’s disgrace over not having children is a parallel with Mary’s disgrace over having a child before marriage. As I’ve walked with friends through infertility and singleness, I’ve thought how ironic it is that girls spend their teenage years afraid of pregnancy then many of us shift to being afraid it will never happen. The brunt of the disgrace for both falls on women. I don’t have explanations for much, but I do believe that our lives, our being here, are never mistakes, and that, as It’s A Wonderful Life says, “Each man’s life touches so many other lives.” And each woman’s, too.

When they say, “There is peace and security,” then sudden destruction will come upon them, as labour pains come upon a pregnant woman, and there will be no escape! But you, beloved, are not in darkness, for that day to surprise you like a thief, for you are all children of the light and children of the day; we are not of the night or of darkness.

~1 Thessalonians 5:3-5

Children of the Day

When we found each other
we talked like two children
in the night, late beside the fireplace,
winding down a tunnel
there was no returning from.
A complicated gift,
a pathless path, a compass
spinning wildly in the dark.

So I came to the threshing floor.
Laid bare. Cold year
followed by a colder winter still.
Something was being born,
but I was unaware.

Still when I stand far off
the shape is blurred. Only close
can I recall that slow and battered spring
light leaked back into the world.
I could not walk by sight,
only step by step
with outstretched arms.

So many years ago, and now
nothing is hidden anymore.
In the darkest corner of the year,
I always reach for you,
and you for me. I do not know
what to make of this—
the hurt that led us by the hand—
but here we stand, in a clearing
full of snow on a bright day.

This poem is loosely inspired by the day’s verse. The verse plays with expected/unexpected, light/dark, hidden/seen. Sometimes we have epochs in our life where deep things are unexpectedly exposed. We stand at a threshold and have the choice whether to shrink back into the shadows or move forward into the light to be further seen and to let our eyes adjust. This poem recalls such a time in my own life and what came from it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him. He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.

~John 1:6-9

Testify

In the mall outside Santa’s display
a woman stops me, telling me good news.
Gives me a pink rubber bracelet that says
LOVELOVELOVE
with a Bible verse.

Is this what You expect of me?
On Sundays I drive past a man
with a megaphone and a sign
about times drawing nigh,
shouting in the rain.

Be the light, say the Christian campus banners
and their ads on buses too.
But I’m tired and dimming and I know
I can’t save anyone from darkness,
even when I try.

Testify.

After so long with your kin, I still
feel bad at this, still sometimes feel fake,
still think other people have some secret thing
I just can’t get to, just can’t understand.

But I twist this rubber bracelet on my wrist.
And know that here You are,
still surrounding me.
Last summer as I hiked in mountain
meadows glutted with wildflowers,
love was there with me.
This fall when no future seemed to fit
and I was tired of my own skin,
love was there with me.
In my rushed mornings
and my messy room,
my missed appointments
and my disappointed hopes,
my rising and my going out,
my coming home and falling
on my couch, your love
is there with me.

I might be bad at this, I might just
drag through winter days. But I testify
that I am not the light, and I don’t have to be.
Just a little compact mirror that
hinges out from curving on self-dark,
opens to what rays it can,
reflects a glint of You.

I ran into an evangelist last night in the mall, who knows the evangelist friend I was with. Of Charismatic past, I never felt “on fire” enough to measure up. But time has taught me that God shows up in our ordinary moments as well as on the mountain tops, and that we each reflect His goodness in our own ways, some of which are louder than others. We Anglicans are probably underrepresented among street preachers, but do come see us when you need some quiet space to contemplate with some folky worship in minor keys.

…because of the tender mercy of our God, by which the Dawn will visit us from on high, to shine on those who live in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.

~Luke 1:78,79

Matins

Another threadbare dawn.
Rain unravels unconvincing light.
By 2:30, streets will dim.
Outside my office a thin girl
lights her cigarette
beneath the awning, muttering.
Inside my office we all go
in and out of doors like porters
stooped with parcels on their backs,
carrying the stories others bring to us.
This time of year, some people go
south to find proof there’s still sun.
They report the evidence,
show photographs.
But here the long nights tighten
on us all and I can’t believe
without my own hands in the light.
When walls are closing in,
walk through the wall to me.
When all I see are wounds,
let them be a door to you.
When dawn isn’t enough
to lift the dark, stay close
in the grey until the solstice turns
and snowdrops lift white lanterns
through the mud again.

When the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter,
and our tongue with shouts of joy;
then it was said among the nations,
“The Lord has done great things for them.”
The Lord has done great things for us,
and we rejoiced.

~Psalm 126:1-3

Going to the House

Soon I go to the House
we spent so many years imagining.
Could this be it, could this be
the One? For years doors shut
until we almost gave it up.
Then, a flare of possibility.
Ten years ago, I waited for news
on the other coast, drowsing
on my couch until I got the call.
I ran out sliding in the snow,
yelling down the street.

The House wasn’t beautiful.
Chipped tiles and rotted steps,
dark paint and useless doors.
But we could see what it might become,
could see the faces of new friends
we’d welcome in, the meals
we’d share, and in this light
we painted walls and tore
old fences down.

I lived in the House for years.
It gave me many names and faces
I still hold, and many I forget.
And now I live away. But still
when I go back to light the fires,
tend the chickens, prune the trees,
I remember years we waited
with no guarantee.

Not all we ask is granted in the end.
Not all we sow comes back tenfold.
But sometimes He bends low
and answers us, and by that memory,
a flint, we strike a spark
whenever we need light
along our road.

Another twofer due to a busy week! You might see more of these (perhaps even a threefer!) as Christmas nears. The passage from Luke contains some of the most beautiful and consoling verses of all time. Unfortunately it’s been pretty rainy around here (even shutting down the highway with floods) and hard to connect with the reality of dawn. However, today has hints of sun! I can’t wait to spend the day marking papers inside, but at least I know it’s there.

My second poem reflects on Psalm 126, which was a foundational psalm for my colleagues and I a decade ago when we were looking for a new property for Canadian L’Abri. The long wait, and the miraculous way we found a house in the end, has always remained to me what Edith Schaeffer called a “signpost” of God’s faithfulness that we can refer to when we feel lost and unsure again. Dawn hits the hardest after a long, dark night.

Their descendants shall be known among the nations, and their offspring among the peoples; all who see them shall acknowledge that they are a people whom the Lord has blessed.

~Isaiah 61:9

Descendants

In Starbucks
with a letter in my hand.
Another friend,
another pregnancy.
You know the steps.
Say that you’re thrilled
and they’ll be great at this.
I tuck the letter in the envelope.
I slide the envelope
into my bag.
A tall latté, please.

A long staircase in my mind
and I am at the top
in a narrow hall
with a crumbling roof.
Down go the steps,
curved and broadening,
where other people walk
into the decades
holding hands with people
who grow taller
as they walk with them.
They reach a ballroom filled
with champagne flutes and chandeliers.
All night they dance
and make toasts to their kids.
And off the ballroom
through another door
more steps descend
to another ballroom
where those kids will one day waltz
with children of their own.
But my steps end.
No way forward, no way back.
Just sitting here, feet dangling
off the edge.
So what do I write?
Who can speak of his descendants?
For he was cut off, cut off
from this land, this land
where light is golden,
filled with families,
and the stairs keep widening.
And suddenly the stairs
are filled with other figures
moving up and down,
beckoning me.
Now I see a thousand
different rooms, a thousand
dances filled with faces
that I somehow recognize,
that resemble someone
I resemble too.

The Old Testament’s emphasis on a bunch of kids and generations more as a sign of blessing from God isn’t the most comforting to those who are wishing in vain for children. While in this portion of Isaiah the emphasis is on descendants, the verse I reference in the poem, a prophecy about Jesus, points to the ultimate importance of spiritual lineage. God has recently hammered this home to me in a reassurance that even if I never have children of my own, I come from and influence people who bear the image of Christ. And whether or not “all who see” acknowledge the blessing, I can believe and welcome it.

“What should we do then?” the crowd asked. John answered, “Anyone who has two shirts should share with the one who has none, and anyone who has food should do the same.”

~Luke 3:10-11

Two Shirts

Five blazers, seven jackets, 26 sweaters
and 24 shirts in my room, stuffed in the closet,
some on the closet door and more thrown
on the wicker chest, the bed, and yes,
some chucked on the floor. I always find a way to justify
another piece I need. I don’t go to glitzy stores,
I buy so little new, I’m on the cheap,
the thrift store knows me down the street.
I just need a little hit of dopamine, a little find.
Just for a moment, reassured tomorrow I’ll be robed
in insouciance, casual coffee in my hand,
people thinking, “I should be her friend.”
I know some folks go hungry,
folks go cold, and trust me that I care.
Tell me what I should do, but make it something
I already like. I’ll give things up, but it should have
some benefit, like losing weight or making people think
I’m spiritual. After all, it’s not like I’m rich.
Should I be expected to forgo life’s little luxuries?
Should I veer off-trend, mocked by Gen Z?
Am I supposed to keep on wearing ankle socks
and skinny jeans? Surely God’s above such demands.
Don’t talk to me of camel hair; I have a camel coat,
and that colour is in. But the collar is a little out
of style this year, and I’m looking for something else,
something I won’t find if I’m content. I went
into the wilderness asking what I should do
and when he answered me, I asked if I could get
a gift receipt, I asked the return policy,
just in case it doesn’t fit.

I don’t know how many shirts the average person wore in the time of the Gospels. But I’m sure I have far more shirts than any rich person back then did. These poems have been surprisingly convicting to write, especially around my focus on image. This poem is an only slightly dialled up version of my own thought process, embarrassingly enough. I realize that I may ask what God wants me to do but I already have an idea of strict limits He’ll respect. I don’t think shopping is wrong but lately I know it’s slipped into coping and I need to check myself. Thank you, John T. B.

How long, O Lord, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
Why do you make me look at injustice
Why do you tolerate wrongdoing?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.

~Habakkuk 1:2-4

The Altar

Sundays I park underground.
At the parkade entrance is a sidewalk grate
that steams. Every Sunday I drive past and see
a body there, inert in thick Vancouver rain.
Last Sunday it lay half inside a toppled
garbage can. I suck in breath.
Why do you make me look at this?
On my way to church with coffee
in my cup, I don’t want this elbow to my chest.
Six forty to park all day. My car is dry,
watched by security. At the altar,
soft bread, sweet wine, gentle hands.
This is my body. And outside
on the grate—your body too,
surrounded by a cloud.
They will prod it along, to be replaced at night.
I’ll forget until next week.
In the city I don’t know which side I’m on
or who or what is being sacrificed.

John wore clothing made of camel’s hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie.”

~Mark 1:6-7

Wild Honey

In the narrow alley
of a narrow year
I kick a pinecone down the road.
No seeds grow on pavement
but the pines go trying anyways.
You steered me here, off the highway
where old houses turn their backs,
and left me with their garbage cans.
Everybody’s in a family SUV in the HOV
while I’m here on foot and all alone,
going God knows where and nowhere fast.
I don’t know what I’m meant to say,
not yet. I know the stories of prophets
in the wilderness and how they ended up.
All the years the locusts ate,
and now I’m eating them.
I don’t know if normal ever
was a choice for me,
the one the angel named.
Before I was born I knew your voice,
I thrilled to it. Sweetness never seems to come
without some pain. But I do believe
Your goodness is distilled
in hollow, broken crannies hidden
from the busy roads. And by that
I'll be sustained, however long I wander,
’til I find the riverbank,
and leaping in my chest, Your name.

I was so tired last night I couldn’t even finish writing up my poem here. So, today is a twofer. Both of these poems ended up very Vancouver-y. In the first one I was thinking of the moral ambiguity of being in a city where there’s so much wealth and poverty juxtaposed. The systemic issues feel overwhelming so mostly I do nothing in response, other than feel bad. It’s hard to know who is “wicked” and who is “righteous” when it feels like we’re all complicit in some way.

The second one I was imagining John in a suburban wilderness, the back alleys of Vancouver. There are grasshoppers instead of locusts, and I’m not sure about wild honey, but whatever. I wonder what John’s time in the wilderness consisted of. How long did he spend there? What was he doing? He always comes across as a confident figure, but did he, like so many of the other prophets, have his moments of feeling lost or questioning? Just a little poetic experiment.

They will say, “Where is this ‘coming’ he promised? Ever since our ancestors died, everything goes on as it has since the beginning of creation.” But they deliberately forget that long ago by God’s word the heavens came into being and the earth was formed out of water and by water.

~2 Peter 3:4-5

Out of Water and by Water

Out of water and by water
came the Child into the world.
A tremor rippled in the aqueducts;
the water rose up in the ancient wells.
He entered the green river. As he rose
a bird came down, the dove
that herded land from water at a word,
that when water unmade land again,
found evidence of life. By water
and light came the sign water would never
wash the earth of us again. On wild waters
stood the Child, and the waves became
as glass to him. From his side came water
mixed with blood and he held
a glass to catch it in his hand,
held it out to us.
We saw all these things.
All these things were written down.
But we turn the faucets
every morning and believe
our wells are bottomless.
All will go on as it always has.
We wash our hands and remind ourselves
that water is our servant and our friend.
While the Child stands asking
for a cup of water at our door.

About halfway through this project (going up to Christmas) and I’m getting tired! I’m also in the home stretch of homework, which makes it harder to find time to write poems. This one, inspired by the apocalyptic vision of the chapter these verses come from, took on a William Blake feel to me, which is why I paired it with a painting of his from the book of Revelation. I just let images of water from the Bible rise to mind and saw what came from them. I find it interesting to see how different the tone of these poems can be. My first draft was very informal and quotidian, but I ended up with something totally different, only coming back at the end to what I’d started with. It’s hard for me to just let these poems be what they are without tinkering too much, but it’s a good practice in letting go and just playing with them.

I will listen to what God the Lord says;
he promises peace to his people,
his faithful servants—
but let them not turn to folly.
Surely his salvation is near those who fear him,
that his glory may dwell in our land.

Love and faithfulness meet together;
righteousness and peace kiss each other.
Faithfulness springs forth from the earth,
and righteousness looks down from heaven.
The Lord will indeed give what is good,
and our land will yield its harvest.

~Psalm 85:8-12

Prayer for 3 AM

Speak peace here. I carry like a dead coal
in my chest the week’s stories that feel
immoveable, even by fire. I wake
at night and churn my thoughts
but nothing solidifies. I fill another
Post-It with a list; I write another
note into my phone. I lose count of my stitches
once again; once again I must unravel
the whole thing. So many people trusting me
with such importances and you know, as I do,
that I go, as they do, with just a little light,
no high-beams on the road ahead.
I listen for a voice. I press my ear
against the ground. I try to read the clouds.
Winter keeps its silences.
Its only message is the rain.
What harvest comes from frozen earth?
I know we’ve all been fools, could make a rosary
of ways we’ve foiled ourselves, failed you.
If you kept your own count, who could stand?
But instead you break the string and send
this list of failures scattering.
When I wake in the night, and neither
floor nor ceiling feels secure, come near
and greet me with a kiss of peace.