I find it hard to throw myself into something if my life doesn’t depend on it. My siblings and I used to use phrase, “Do it right, or don’t do it at all,” and it came to my head last week. I didn’t realize it's a motto I still chant under my breath. Yesterday, I … Continue reading The Worth of a Garden
I wrote a letter to my friend, Sarah, last week and told her I’m suffering from Gardening Shame. There are weeds in every box, and I haven’t re-mulched the paths, so black tarp shows through like the garden’s underwear. My tomato plants won't take to the soil and stand limp. Zoysia grass creeps in and … Continue reading Gardening Shame
"'But if it’s to be a flower name, then I don’t trouble about the length: it must be a beautiful flower, because, you see, I think she is very beautiful, and is going to be beautifuller still.’ Frodo thought for a moment. ‘Well, Sam, what about Elanor, the sun-star, you remember the little golden flower … Continue reading A Little Light
The swingset oak is forty years old, taller than our maple, cedars, even its pin oak siblings. Mr. and Mrs. Adams planted it when our neighborhood was still a field and Mom was still a kid who ran through it. Early last fall, the tree started browning— far too early. By November, it was naked … Continue reading A Good Sign
There were seeds that got thumb-printed into the ground, and there was bread dough that hadn’t risen. There were farmers and fishermen. There were women in labor, who groaned and bled into the darkness. Jesus saw what surrounded him and pulled it into the stories he told, because a King and Kingdom had come, were … Continue reading Like a Seed
I’ve called this place Bethany J’s Journal since it’s beginning, but I’ll admit it isn’t my journal— not my real, blue hardback with the exotic fish on the front and squatty cursive inside. Here, I draft, tweak, redraft, edit, polish, and find pretty pictures to match each article. My real journal is messier, and while … Continue reading Introducing “Sunday Sketches”
Not even my parents can remember a blizzard like last week’s— when we shoveled half a foot of snow off the pond just so we could skate, while the wind reddened our faces and froze our hair. More snow covered our work in minutes. The sky cleared on Wednesday, so now it’s sun on ice— … Continue reading Winters Past & Present
For seven years, I stood on my neighbors’ porches every other Friday to hand them some pages I’d written, rolled into a rubber band and labelled: Argyle News. The neighborhood newspaper was mostly a briefing of the birthdays, holidays, and graduations in my family, sometimes headlined by a tree that had fallen across Edgewood Road … Continue reading Front Porch Ambitions
When Jesus says, “Stay dressed for action and keep your lamps burning” in Luke 12:35, I get two images from Tolkien’s The Return of the King. The first is of Minas Tirith— a stone fortress towering against the enemy realm of Mordor. I see Pippin the hobbit bumping between soldiers who are rushing to find … Continue reading Part Three: Belonging in a Kingdom
For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (2 Cor. 6:16). As my church crawled out of quarantine, blinking in the May daylight, I had a run-in with … Continue reading Part Two: Belonging to a Person & People
