SheLoves Magazine

Our streets tremble these days. They quake with so much wrong and woe. How can we think of green garlands and twinkle lights, or send carolers out on the streets still stained with the blood of our sons? Ashen mothers offer their call and response from one street corner to the next, a slow dirge then an anguished cry. They clutch graduation portraits to their chest. Stand in front of cameras testifying to the humanity of their children, the inhumane…

Often times personal lament and confession overlap. There are moments we see ourselves amid the ashes and we complain, confess, speak out our part in the wrongness of things. Reading the lament Diana offered, this one phrase haunted me relentlessly: “And sometimes, the betrayer is me.” I love my brown brothers and sisters. Yet as I scour my own upbringing, I see how my words and actions have betrayed otherwise. It is a systemic wrong, but also a personal one…

My sweet son is notorious for losing things – pens, socks, even his phone. Once something has gone missing, he moves right along without noticing most of the time. Losing and living skip along hand in hand for him. I’m the one reminding him to go to the lost and found at school to look for the left behind lunch box / water bottle / hoody. If it wasn’t for me hot on his little heels I doubt he’d go…

I open my eyes. The morning light snuffs out the last embers of sleep. Hear, O Israel. I close my eyes. Lashes and lids become a wet blanket. Hear, O Israel. Each day bookended with these words, the final desire of the soul before death uttered in these words: “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your…

I got heartbreaking news recently. I’d seen it coming for weeks, but the audible words still knocked the wind out of me. Disappointment came first, the sensation of stillbirth. My dream that I labored on for well over nine months was a casualty. I carried an almost immediate emptiness due to this incomplete creation, this conversation I’d not contribute to anytime soon. It’s sad to hold a dead dream in your hands. But I was unprepared for what came next…

When I drop her off at school in the crisp morning, she turns to wave good-bye. She leaves me to my women’s work. I drive to the coffee shop. I pull out my journal and write, fountain pen on hyper-speed and still trailing my racing thoughts. I try to write my way to a better neighborhood, maybe an alley in the New City. I tell stories from Burundi where the Batwa move from cracked ground to fertile soil soaked with…

We shuffled slowly into the sanctuary and between the pews. We, so young and squirrely, still uninitiated in hushed tones, moved in as much silence as we could muster from one station to the next. At each wood etching the somber procession would come to a stop. We’d look at the plaque, listen to the reflection given by the fresh-faced priest and then say a prayer more (but mostly less) together. We were learning to walk the Stations of the…

I want to see and hear rightly, to be found responsive to God’s work in the world and a ready collaborator. I don’t want to be caught flat-footed like the disciples, sitting in a boat with Jesus but unable to perceive the truth around me. Remember the story? Jesus had been out and about Galilee with the twelve, from one side of the lake to the other, extending compassion, teaching, serving up bread with baskets of leftovers. In both feeding…

This morning I'm sharing some reflections on my reading of Desmond Tutu's God Has A Dream, my most re-read book penned by this beloved African elder. The SheLoves Magazine book club, The Red Couch, embraced this book for the month of February. How wonderful to read with friends - I've enjoyed Twitter exchanges, Voxer conversations and more around the themes of transformation, hope, suffering, neighbor love and more. Here is a bit: In God Has A Dream the beloved South…

We belong to the sixth day of creation. We belong to the dark, damp soil teeming with freshly created life. We stand as shared substance with all the seeds and biological matter packed into that rich dirt. We are connected to the cosmos, the light and dark of the first day swirling around us from the beginning. We belong to the garden and all its goodness; variety and bounty, food without toil, movement unfettered by constricting clothes or the straightjacket…