crescent moon winking over the dawn. from my kitchen window.

i wake earlier and earlier, as if those fractions of hours just might wrap me more certainly in the velvet folds of the day. as if i’m grasping for a blanket someone’s pulling away.

i wake early for peacefulness, for quietude. i wake for the hum of the cricket, even before the trill of the dawn begins. just now a bird with quivering throat joined in. it’s off in the distance, faint. faint is the way i like my sounds in the morning. muffled. just beginning to fracture the silence.

i wake before a single floorboard creaks. i wake before anyone else turns a faucet. i wake to be alone with my thoughts and my prayers, and the gentle God who joins me.

this was a week for awaking earlier and earlier. it gets harder and harder to know what to do, to rise up against hate and horrors. i blanketed myself this week by typing away. i’m typing as fast as i can, bearing down on a deadline, typing gentle words, shimmering words, onto the page, in hopes that they’ll carve out rivulets of blessedness, course straight into hearts. whoever opens the pages, in months or years down the road, i pray they find something gentle, words that simply tap at the door, trickle in, make for peaceable eddies, right there in the well of someone’s heart.

the light now is beginning to soak into sky. i can make out the filigree of morning, the edge of the dill, the willow fronds barely rustling. the wind hasn’t yet stirred up its muscle. the morning is still.

the moon, winking, hasn’t yet faded–dawn’s cradle, off to the east, far beyond my kitchen window, it shines in sliver of crescent. where will you be when the moon blocks the sun, that once in a century heavenly upstage?

there wasn’t much to steady us in this past whirl of days, but there were glimmering moments, one or two, that broke through the melee, that caught our attention, took our breath away in the course of rending our hearts.

the mother of heather heyer, the woman crushed by a hellfire car in charlottesville, she was the voice of pure holiness this week. her lone voice rose up from the din. her words echo and echo in the chambers of my heart. hers is the poetry of the week, worth remembering.

here’s a bit of what she said, called out into the wilderness of a nation reeling, a nation whose moral compass is spinning dizzily, scrambling to find its true north.

sharon bro:

“They tried to kill my child to shut her up. Well, guess what? You just magnified her.”

“You need to find in your heart that small spark of accountability. What is there that I can do to make the world a better place? What injustice do I see—and want to turn away: ‘I don’t really want to get involved in that. I don’t want to speak up. They’ll be annoyed with me. My boss might think less of me.’ I don’t care. You poke that finger at yourself, like Heather would have done, and you make it happen. You take that extra step. You find a way to make a difference in the world.”

she concluded with this:

“So, remember in your heart: If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention. And I want you to pay attention, find what’s wrong. Don’t ignore it. Don’t look the other way. You make it a point to look at it, and say to yourself, ‘What can I do to make a difference?’ And that’s how you’re going to make my child’s death worthwhile. I’d rather have my child, but, by golly, if I got to give her up, we’re going to make it count.”

beautiful chairs, make it count.

where’s your true north, and how will you get there?