Ever found that the more familiar you are with something, the less likely you are to notice it? Like the earth turning each day to catch the first bright rays of the sun. Or the liquidy feel of water as it rolls over your tongue. Or the shifting swoosh of sound that fills our days […]
Meadow Rue Merrill
Posted inTimes Record
Faith Notes: Summer’s grand finale
September has long been my favorite month, and not just because I get to celebrate my birthday. But because it feels like the climax of the year, as if every seed and limb and leaf has been working together for just this moment to release its fruit before ceding to fall. Out my writing shed […]
advertisement
Posted inTimes Record
Faith Notes: How we survive
When my friend Jenny was getting ready to host a party celebrating her daughter’s wedding, she cleaned her farmhouse top to bottom, even washing all 24 of the ironstone tea cups stacked in her dining room cupboard. Ridiculous! I thought, helping her. Who’s going to check her china closet? Then I began planning a wedding […]
Posted inTimes Record
Faith Notes: Worth holding onto?
“Antiques,” the flaking wooden sign advertised, hanging over the closed double doors of an old church planted on a rural Maine hillside. Driving past with my husband, I had just enough time to glimpse the overgrown grass and darkened windows before the church faded from view. “How sad,” I said to Dana, who sat behind […]
Posted inTimes Record
Faith Notes: The fine art of letting go
Juggling a lot this summer? Me too. For the past month I’ve been immersed in an intense graduate education course. My husband thought this would be a good time to demolish the back of our house to replace the rotting windows. And – thanks to a determined rodent – I’ve had to replant my vegetable […]
Posted inTimes Record
Faith Notes: A dull green tint
When we bought our house, one of the first things that attracted me to it was the light. It streamed through ou four giant south-facing windows like buttery-warm happiness. Unfortunately all four of those windows were damaged. The wood sills were rotten. The double-paned glass had separated, creating a milky-white fog. And some refused to […]
Posted inTimes Record, Uncategorized
Faith Notes: True greatness
Everywhere I look – on social media, television commercials, slogans printed on T-shirts and pasted on signs – the prevailing message today seems to be about achieving greatness, thinking big, striving for the maximum measure of success. “Don’t be afraid to give up the good to go for the great,” I read on a social […]
Posted inTimes Record
Faith Notes: My summer game plan
Feeling exhausted? Me too. Falling-asleep-on-the-couch-at-7-p.m. exhausted. Muscles-aching-like-I-just-ran-a-marathon exhausted. Snapping-at-my-family-over-missing-lunch-boxes-and-Who-ate-the-last-piece-of-cake exhausted. After a full year of pandemic teaching while raising a family, taking graduate classes and finishing a novel, it’s hard to keep pushing. Which is why, my word for this summer is ‘renew.’ Our responsibilities may be different, but since I’m probably not alone in […]
Posted inTimes Record
Faith Notes: Don’t give up
Several years ago, when my family moved up the river from Bath, one surprise that came with our new home was a tenacious apple tree. Despite the tall grass and thistles that threatened to choke it and a deluge of water that had loosened its roots, causing its trunk to grow sideways, it continued to […]
Posted inTimes Record
Faith Notes: Not the whole story
If you’ve caught me wandering around town on one of my infrequent escapes from work or home, you might notice that dark crescents shadow my eyes and I haven’t had time to wash my hair. For most of the past year, I’ve been dragging myself out of bed before dawn to sit at my laptop […]