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  This is the most hard experience which anyone can face to wait and watch the missiles fall on your house. #GazaUnderAttack — Jehad Saftawi (@Jehadsaftawi) August 23, 2014   This tweet from Gaza stopped me in my tracks this afternoon. For a moment, I put myself in this man's shoes, standing on his street amid piles of rubble, watching for the missiles that will demolish my home. Waiting, watching... for weapons targeting my home. His staccato dispatches tell of…

My son is dead on the street. A part of me lay dead, too. The whole of me crumples over with the weight of ‘Why?’ I look around at everyone watching and hope they do more, hope they witness to my irrevocable, unspeakable loss in broad daylight. Don’t let me bury my son alone. ***** Will you step in as a pallbearer for our dead? The mothers want to know – will you walk with us the final distance to…

[caption id="attachment_1468" align="aligncenter" width="600"] With Batwa friends in Burundi // Photo Credit: Tina Francis[/caption] Two weeks ago I was in transit from Burundi (East Africa) to the United States. The news flashing across multiple media outlets – CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC, the New York Times - highlighted the Israeli incursion into Gaza, the advancing of ISIS in Iraq, the confusion around the downed Malaysian airline in Ukraine and the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. I boarded my plane aware of…

This is my son. He's ten years old. His life matters. How sad that I feel the need to document the obvious. But the last set of days this thought has permeated my thinking. In the months prior, I've been grateful he is currently living overseas where his color isn't a factor in how his neighbors perceive him. I seldom say this out loud because people, mostly white people, accuse me of over-reacting or misreading the context or being too…

Recently I’ve been considering the poverty of our discipleship. It all began when I stumbled over the word discipleship in my Twitter feed one afternoon. I recognized the word, of course. But what came to mind was how little I ever use it anymore, though I remain an ardent follower of Jesus. This wasn’t always the case. In my youth discipleship functioned as load-bearing word in my vocabulary. This word held pride of place in youth group conversations and on…

[caption id="attachment_1457" align="aligncenter" width="600"] PHOTO CREDIT: Tina Francis[/caption] My summer is nearly done. In a matter of days I’ll pack suitcases, gather passports and make my way home in time for the first day of school. Glancing through the photo album of summer days, trying to discern if he hit a growth spurt between my arrival and departure, I realized another kind of growth. These are some of the things my son learned this summer… 1. You can talk to…

I Sabbath in quiet, in the late, dark night on the edges of Sunday buried in the pages of a book maybe savoring the sun-sweet bowl of pineapple in the late afternoon I feel Sabbath good in a momentary sigh a slow inhale and a slower exhale my body draped across a couch conscious of my toes wiggling I feel it's holiness in unhurried conversations in decisions to not do, to not clutter, to not add one more thing in unapologetic…

Five years ago we landed in Burundi. Around the small capital I noticed signs everywhere – signs of other NGOs present in the city with logos plastered on their large Land Cruisers, big placards at their local offices and signs out in the countryside wherever they had a project. The rampant self-promotion turned my stomach sour. No one could do any good thing without erecting a sign to mark it, to prove their worth and claim their territory. For the…

This past Friday our small family piled into our car and drove to Bubanza. We celebrated the completion of the first academic year of Kwizera Academy, a school we founded just last year. On the drive home, slicing through the Burundian countryside, I thought about what this landscape has come to mean to me. I felt more deeply what I hope it means to my son who is native to this place. I'm not a poet, but these are the…

[caption id="attachment_1244" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Photo credit: Sarah Joslyn of SarsCreative, originally created for SheLoves Magazine.[/caption] My friend and fellow writing group partner, Christiana Peterson, invited me to share some thoughts on my current writing projects and writing process. How could I not play? First, take a moment to visit Christiana’s place and read about her process (she’s currently working with words around themes of farming, intentional community living and death – so you don’t want to miss out on any…