thin faith

When put into a narrow place, a strait and still straiter space,
the impulse of the breath is up up up and in
to rearrange the organs and turn sideways the gait
to make the self disappear and the breath turn thin.

The mountain range is an insistent endless danger. 
The hope to see the summit has gone dry.
---Hope now to shrink our bodies, and hurry in anger
at ourselves for childish feelings and long lives.

Whatever pocket once held the mustard seeds
had some hole, eaten through maybe in our sleep?
We ask nothing of these cliffs, this sea,
but to spare us. They have no promises to keep.

So we force ourselves thin to fit, to slide
unsuccessfully past the crush of narrow paths
---or, fat, we succumb and try to hide
beneath falling rocks, to feel their fatal wrath.

No one is casting any mountains in the sea or begging
for the crooked ways to go straight.
The problem is not with the landscape, we reckon,
but with our bodies. So we lose weight.

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queensland

How to Eat a 10¢ Blueberry

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okay, THESE berries I picked with my own two hands (pictured)

You do not chomp these berries. You do not inhale them or devour them. You do not hurry these berries.

We misread the sign at the grocery store. Organic Blueberries 97¢. A half-pint of pesticide-free, God's-best-work blueberries for ninety-seven cents? Sounds too good to believe. But we believed. We believed it four times over. 

The receipt on our dining table showed us that each little container of unconventional berries cost $5.97. Five dollars and ninety-seven cents.

This one quart of blueberries cost us $24.

So you do not hurry these berries. You set the berry before you. You carefully, thoughtfully bathe the berry in clean water. You greet the berry and dry it gently, like you would like to be toweled off when you are old and weak: with dignity.

You transport the berry to your lips. You invite it inside, and if it obliges you, you thank it. You say, "No, thank you," and you welcome it to your tongue.

If you must do more than wait for it to dissolve of its own will, going gently into that good night, you press the berry between your muscly tongue and the smooth roof of your mouth––don't waste any on the untasting teeth!––and massage the flesh, the skin, the juice of the berry.

When the organic blueberry is pleased, when the berry acquiesces, when the berry bursts, you make the berry totally your own and you swallow it and you remember your ten cents as a purple dream down the throat.

Little Treasures of Sensation

Those awkward body movements one makes when carrying luggage. I was making those. 

Joshua and I were returning from a quick little trip to Michigan for the weekend and when we emerged from the train tunnel into the open light of downtown Chicago, we were smacked in the face by blowing winds and a thousand falling snowflakes. Late March and it's snowing hard. 

Millennium Station, downtown Chicago

Because I packed for this trip spontaneously and at 2:30am, I'm wearing canvas sneakers and cotton socks on my feet. On top I'm wearing all the shirts and sweaters I could find in my bag, with my slanket (that's my giant scarf/blanket) draped and wrapped and generally adding to my bag lady look. 

And we are hustling and slushing through downtown with those awkward body movements one makes when carrying hand luggage, trying to get to our bus before the snow soaks through our clothes. And I'm freezing. But it's Chicago, and it's downtown, and it's snowing big fat flakes and in spite of myself I see that it's beautiful and that I'm privileged to get to stand in icy wind in the Theater District and take in the postcard of it all. 

Chicago's Theater District in snow

We find our bus and continue our journey toward home, the Rogers Park neighborhood of Chicago, nestled into the far north side of the city, next to Lake Michigan. For an hour we trek up Clark Street, passing sites that have become landmarks of our lives in this city: my sweetheart, the Poetry Foundation; our favorite cupcake place (Molly's!); the quirky theater where we went on our last anniversary (Public House Theatre); M. Henry, our favorite brunch spot; our old gym, our new gym, my old dance studio... 

The back doors of the bus open and I stretch my short legs long to reach the sidewalk, and I slip, slide, and fall awkwardly, still with the luggage. Exceptionally covered in snow now, I remember why I invested in the high-quality, well-insulated snow boots with rugged traction that are sitting dry in my closet. 

The most treacherous obstacles for any pedestrian on a day like today are the moats of icy slush and filthy street water that separate the sidewalks from the roads, moats which must be crossed to cross the street. We must overcome four of these murky, freezing waterways to get to our block and we carefully maneuver in such a way that our shoes and socks are completely soaked.

Joshua starts jogging for home, his backpack bouncing, yellow suitcase swinging with his arm. So close to home it's okay that our feet are frozen and our bags are jostling us and we slide across the sidewalk, giggling. He looks back at me with love and joviality in his eyes, snow still floating heavily down, and I laugh the louder at the postcard of it all.

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snow falling on our street

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view from the front door

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a bit of our living room :)

We make it home. We squeak our slushy sneakers through the doorway and set down the awkward baggage. 

The next hour is for me an hour of perfect sensory delights. I discard my soggy and snowflaked layers. I doze off in a warm bath. I wake up to fragrant Indian food. We eat on the couch, sitting close, listening to the Sleeping At Last vinyl sing through the stereo. I very slowly eat four chocolate cookies that have just come out of the oven. We nap, sandwiched between my favorite sheets and topped with a down comforter wrapped in a cool cotton duvet. The sun shines through the gauzy bedroom curtains. Bliss. 

In prayer with Joshua I thank God for these delights of the body, His little treasures of sensation. And I am grateful for this day, for being alive and happy.

Box My Ears Until My Head Rings

I have a mind that lights up like a deep blue summer field blinking with lightning bugs. A dark but active background with points of light flashing on and off, on and off and on. A constellation, not a comet. 

I don't brood. I'm close to incapable of it. 

I spend my days and nights in academia and I wonder what it would be like if I could just sit and think on one thing for a while, reading the same book for a long time, and free from the currents running upwards in me that tell me to move move move and find something else to do. 

Unless hypnotized by conversation or good writing or a video, I rarely think about the same thing for longer than a minute. Rare is the activity that can mesmerize my firefly field and hypnotize them into a synchronized glow that lasts entire minutes. My mind is normally a deep blue summer field.

Photo by Fernando Gregory Milan/iStock / Getty Images

An emotion has to really punch me in the gut to distract me from my myriad distractions. A little hurt feelings won't do. I need a big wallop, or a series of serious wallops, to do the job. Someone's gotta box my ears until my head rings or else I'll keep changing the radio station.

This happens occasionally––the big smash to the head, the kidney abuse. Right now I'm in the ring, 7th round. ––A series of blows. An unforeseen interpersonal rift that hurt in a big way and now hurts every day in a little way. A long negotiation to resolve a church issue (getting worse before it gets better). And the first of four big, "comprehensive" exams in my PhD program. 

This first exam is on Thursday and I'm not ready for it. People ask me how the studying is going and I tell them it's a disaster. I'm accused of overstudying (they think that's something I would do), and no assurance from me seems to convince them that I'm in real danger of not passing. It's a little hard to get sympathy when people think you're an overreacting genius.

I'll have to write three essays in three hours on three topics that will be chosen for me out of a list of eighteen; I feel great about maybe 5 of those topics. I've worked for two months researching and writing and now I've got three days left to memorize it all. I'm supposed to prove to a couple of the smartest theologians I know that I know what I'm doing. But I don't know what I'm doing, so it's a hard sell, see? "Without any notes, write an essay real quick on theories of meaning and interpretation and how that intersects with the grammatical-historical method, for evaluation by Kevin Vanhoozer." (Google him and you'll understand why I don't want to do this. He's a great guy and I'm fortunate to have him advising me, but sheesh. Ease up on the genius, Doc. Similar problems of expertise arise with my second reader, Lisa Sung.)

As the deadline nears I've found myself thinking about nothing. The flashing in the field ceases. The meadow is dark. I'm sitting up in bed, looking at nothing and thinking of nothing, and Joshua says, "Kitty, I've never seen you like this before." I tell him: "I've never taken an exam like this before and there's never been so much to lose."