joyeberry

[joyeberry]

Hospitality of Earth

It wasn’t even half an acre of land, but it had our name to it and the acreage stretched when the shoreline waned because somebody decided to drain the lake or we didn’t get enough rain that year. It was my favorite patch of dirt and rocks and grass on the planet. I knew it like a friend; preferred sore feet from jagged rocks and brittle shelled oak leaves to wearing shoes because you don’t wear…

[joyeberry]

Unavoidable Remembrance - A Letter to my Daughter Ten Years In

It has been a decade now – plus a few hours – since I met you and everything changed. I told you last night, curled up in your bed, what you taught me, what you keep teaching me. I told you it was more of a remembering. Something I knew when I was little, but forgot and your existence made it unavoidable. I looked at you for the first time outside of my body and I loved you. Not for anything…

[joyeberry]

When You Find What Doesn't Belong

“Find something to look at,” she instructs from her little square on the zoom call. We are practicing presence and we’ve primed ourselves with quiet to pay attention. So I scan my bedroom – the big, cozy bed on which my carefully chosen pillows and comforter lay neatly fluffed and smoothed as a gentle invitation to rest,  the decorations on the wall I chose with intention to remind me that the…

[joyeberry]

God's Dream

God’s Dream

The first time I heard someone call it God’s Dream it was my own voice reading Desmond Tutu’s words (which were paraphrasing Jesus) to my children. 

Everyone who wants to see God’s dream come true must see with the eyes of a child.

Desmond Tutu, Children of God Storybook Bible

Something in me stirred. 

“The Kingdom of Heaven” is sometimes taught to mean the place we go when we die (or the…

[joyeberry]

In a Just Moment

For the whole big wideness in us that sees and hears and knows, and for the focused presence, too that knows nothing more than what's in front of us.

I am reading on a Sunday morning and my husband is sitting in the chair next to me meditating or sleeping – I can’t really tell. I love mornings like this. Slow, light-filled, quiet. I love indulging in the open time, ignoring the chores we’ll have to get to so that we can be comfortable here in order to just be comfortable here.

One of my children moves around upstairs. I know because I hear…

[joyeberry]

What Matters Most

Today marks 4 years of time without my mother.

Which seems absurd. Something about another revolution around the sun makes me a little sick, like on a carnival ride. We’re moving too fast. How the hell did we pass the Fun House again already?

I was prompted this morning to consider that grief reveals the things that matter most to you. I get that. I miss being seen and known by her and…

[joyeberry]

The Right Way to Quarantine

The Right Way to Quarantine - finally. An answer.

I said goodbye to my husband of almost exactly one year for his 15 month tour in Afghanistan and drove myself back to the military house we called ours. I got three steps in and collapsed onto the grocery-store-tile flooring and Samson, my somewhat antisocial dog, took pity on me, sat through the big emotions and confusing sobs. I was scared Gabe wouldn’t come back from the war, scared I wouldn’t…

[joyeberry]

Shaky Resurrection

It cracked Loud. All the way open. My heart tore bridges down in the crashing Made scratched up waves of concrete into dust And bedrock didn’t mean a thing – what bedrock? The counterfeit of solid? Iron rusts. Ha! My heart found torrid joy in decomposing

It fell. Quiet. Didn’t know it could. My spirit ached and rattled with last breathes Before it closed its eyes and let us drop through disbelief

[joyeberry]

Reconstruction

I am going home, you said, I relish every word you left, bereft Of every one you didn’t yet And every one I didn’t coax out of you when I could. Those are the ones that might be wood.

But it’s only straw instead.

Home is it? and you insist, But when your heart stopped cold I missed The home at the part where your last breathe kissed This end of eternal sowing, sighed Into the harvest of your life

[joyeberry]

Look at the Birds

If Jesus is actually saying that God will give you food and clothes and the things you need to survive if you ask for them, he's just wrong.

We asked. We prayed. We hoped. She died.

Did I pray hard enough? Did I want it bad enough? Did I hope with enough expectation?

My mom should be here. I need her, not just the love she taught me that doesn’t go away or the likeness of her in other wise women. I need her.Only she has the stories I need to hear, the particular wisdom about half my DNA, the face that my eyes saw first, the…

[joyeberry]

I wrote this on the darkest day of the year reflecting on how we stuff Jesus into Christmas. . And this isn’t what the post is about, but it also makes me think of my marriage (which celebrates 14 years today). How appropriate that we got married just two days after solstice. Just as the light is barely coming back. We were hopeful children standing at the altar and it wasn’t long before we fell - hard - down the steps and onto the reality of a poorly carpeted floor (tell me what good Berber is, please). We didn’t have support - my parents were divorcing and most of the other couples we knew were either newlyweds, too, or deeply unhappy in their unions. . And it got so dark. . I’m saying that we’ve been to the edge of ourselves and our marriage, both, and god, did we need to believe in light. . I never wanted a winter wedding. But I got one and now, with a story between us, I think it fits. We are not a summer couple. We are a light-in-darkness pair. We are guided by a sometimes tiny flicker just after we’re convinced the light is going away for good. We are a two days after Winter Solstice union. . Last night at dinner with some friends (a grace that’s hard to name) Gabe brought up the ancient practice around a Yule Log - how people would get the biggest chunk of wood they could find and light it on fire during these dark days to dance around the bright warmth for a week or so until it burned out. They brought the sun close when it was wandering away and their celebrating brought it back, brought them into communion with their life source, and the brilliance of a giant chunk of wood on fire might be my favorite image to pair with a tiny, needy baby in a dirty crib. . @whosaidberry, I am so grateful to uncover light with you: faint or flame. . Anyway, if you want to read this loosely related post, there is a link in my bio. 😄👌🏼 . #marriage #iguess #wintersolstice #hope #emmanuel #godwithus #yulelog #lightoftheworld https://www.instagram.com/p/B6bA2vEAvTO/?igshid=tl6icxnduzww

[joyeberry]

With Us

I have wonderful memories of childhood Christmases – pajamas and rare hours of togetherness without a television playing. Christmas is family and warmth and presents and too much delicious food. It’s indulgence during scarcity: you eat jam long after the bushes that grew the berries have gone dormant. It’s a time to remind ourselves that death doesn’t last, that sweetness and ecstasy are not off…

[joyeberry]

Because whether or not you think you can get through the Unimaginable, you do. Maybe you do it poorly or try not to do it at all, but you will get through it. And it is available to you, if you want it, to get through it well - that is, to find Good. We took Bradley classes during my first pregnancy (highly recommend, they're great) because regardless of whether or not your pregnancy is bliss or burden you are aware of something truly horrible: this baby is coming out. 

[joyeberry]

Telling the Truth

Instagram wouldn’t let me say as much as I apparently needed to say about this book so here’s a post! A book review-ish.

It takes me a very long time to read anything (ask my friend Brynn, who has not given up on me yet, but also went more than a year without seeing her copy of Anna Karenina and I still hadn’t finished it). But this little gem is hard to put down and frankly, these words work their asses off to get themselves into just the right order and say the Important Thing and I have got to tell you about it.

[joyeberry]

And Now We Have Questions

When was the last time I scooted over for Jesus to sit down? When did I stretch my hand out to hold his invisible one for the final grip? When did I stop assuming he was there and begin to wonder?

I didn’t realize other people didn’t believe in God. There was something more real than real about God to me. Special. God was special. I was special. I didn’t need anyone to tell me that he loved me; of course he did, he made me.

I remember talking to God in the back of my Dad’s pickup truck or during class. Wherever I was, whoever was around, I could find a space where it was just me and my…

[joyeberry]

#becauseofRHE

It strikes me today that the liturgy of Ash Wednesday teaches something that nearly everyone can agree on. Whether you are part of a church or not, whether you believe today or your doubt, whether you are a Christian or an atheist or an agnostic or a so-called “none” (whose faith experiences far transcend the limits of that label) you know this truth deep in your bones: “Remember that you are…

[joyeberry]

On Spring

I started this for a writing prompt and here it is with a little polish; mostly raw, enjoy the mixed metaphors. :D Happy Spring, friends!

I’m not sure precisely why our calendar falls the way it does. I imagine it has to do with the length of days, but whatever the reason, I like that we experience New Year’s in the middle of winter and that Spring comes well into our failed resolutions.

The natural sermon of life and death and resurrection are evident in every season, crescendo over every year. It’s unavoidable. Spring is birth,…