Loren Paulsson

I used to say, "I love you." Then you'd ask, "Why?" And I'd try to think of something you might not construe as something you should do. I'm not sure how to tell why I loved you then. My sense has change of what love is, and much has happened since. Maybe we're shaped by promises we make, and by how we value them. Something like intertwining yews that grow in England on either side of churchdoors. Now with little yews here too we face the wind and snow together. And parts of who we are ourselves become who we are to each other. Not because we think we'll last forever but because we wouldn't trade the chance to be what good we can for however long we're able.

London, Easter Sunday evening, 2011 One learns to own it  when a Frenchwoman asks what other languages you speak then nods and says, “A real American.” There was the Canadian and a man from Taiwan I met at Notre Dame. He and I ate dinner somewhere I can't recall in Paris though I do recall our waiter and the green beans. I checked my pack in Holy Head at the Irish Ferries terminal and later boarded the shuttle that took passengers out to the ferry's mooring on the pier. She said her name was Vera, and she asked if I was Irish. I recall her saying something like “Oh, President Obama!” I nodded, feeling awkward that I hadn't voted for him. Her accent came from Africa. She said, “God bless America.” And I was humbled by her generosity... ...and grateful for my President.

We love Jesus in the way we like prescription medication; we expect him to improve our outcomes. We say the “way to financial peace,” is “to walk daily with the Prince of Peace….” and read past “the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” We say Charlie Kirk “knew if he could get all of you rowing in the streams of liberty,  you'd come to its source, and that's the Lord.” Faith as “worldview” or antidote to sin (by which we mean embarrassment) complete with exhortations to persuade your friends and family. A friend once felt dismay a minister “so sound on other things” concluded Genesis 1 didn't speak of 24-hour days. My friend had less concern about how much  his own interpretation borrowed from materialism. We're more ready to pronounce on others’ soundness than to examine how we're making that assessment. When pastors abuse the people in their care, we preach “forgiveness” to the victims. In order to defend the “cause of Christ”  by which we mean publishing, pl...

I was born after the Mariner's third season and recall the Kingdome next to King Street Station. All my friends were Ken Griffey Jr fans, and I remember 1995 and the at-bat in 1996 Against Cleveland's Orel Hershiser when I realized  I loved Griffey too. I carry in my heart 116 wins the summer of 2001 and 90 or more losses 15 of 46 full seasons And how year after year  Dave Niehaus gave us the poetry to love this place, these people, and this game. And now Cal Raleigh's joined the pantheon of catchers and switch hitters but to Seattle fans, Like Junior, Davis, Edgar,  RJ, Buhner, Ichiro, Polanco, he's given us a reason to endure.

Eriogonum niveum Grandpa drove his 1968 blue Chevrolet to an orchard where they set out bins of apples  every harvest southwest of Soap Lake. The wind whipped past rolled-down windows. Rabbitbrush bloomed golden yellow in the sun. And grandpa said, “The golden-rod is blooming; The corn is turning brown; The trees in apple orchards With fruit are bending down....” The poem first appeared in 1892, Maybe 40 years before a teacher gave it to Grandpa  to memorize before he went to work after eighth grade. The poet, Helen Hunt Jackson,  wrote a protest of the Sand Creek Massacre and other evils done to native peoples. Now my daughters, 3 and 5, join me, on a hike and notice rabbitbrush and buckwheat turning amber by the trail. And I hear Grandpa in my mind, and wonder what these two kids will think in 40 years  when they see rabbitbrush in bloom.

"The Crucifixion," by Enrico Manfrini, Cathedral of Saint Mary of the Assumption , San Francisco, Calif. That Easter Sunday evening at Westminster Abbey,  Sister Judith CSC, then eighty-nine, conducted; sunlight streamed down through windows high above. “It's a big space to fill,” she said,  her stoop barely allowing her to see over the podium,  “so have a good yell.” The hymn began,  “Jesus Christ is risen to-day, Alleluia!...” In the gospel reading from Luke 24,  Jesus' disciples seemed not to expect a crucifixion:  “...But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel....'” They also seem not to expect a resurrection:  “'...Moreover, some women of our group astounded us....  they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels  who said that he was alive....'”  Later in the gospel reading:  “...When he was at the table with them,  he took bread, blessed and broke it,  and ga...

Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris was dark.  I walked along Rue de la Cité—as I recall—  Good Friday evening.  Silent worshipers poured out across  Place du Parvis and into noisy streets.  The week before that night  I'd finally been broken by a love I thought might last.  Awed by Paris itself,  I was perhaps prepared somewhat to notice  incongruous realities.  Some imagine Jesus mostly as example.  For them, the crucifixion has  some saving spiritual lining  on the way to power and success.  When I was 12, I adopted lots of rules.  Mine was a judicial universe  where God's wrath must go somewhere  and Jesus makes account for human sin.  And there are many “teachers”  happy to tell others what to do.  Until the weight of all my rules  and the falsehoods “teachers” sometimes tell  became untenable.  Good Friday night I wonder why  this story ...

Cathédrale de Notre-Dame de Paris, Holy Saturday, 2011. In place of fame a cross and tomb,     An unexpected fellow sufferer. The king of thorns, dead on a tree;     Lamb not passed over;      Day turned to night, the veil split.     A psalmist's and a pagan's intuition. “...this was the Son of God...” Previous  §  Next

The Light with whom existence is shot through Stands in the night of our exile and death, Amid the bloody aching mess of birth, All that went wrong, that's left, and still might be. In Mary's arms, in Cain and Abel's stead, Creator into His creation breaks, Becoming creature, scandal, strange, Sharing in sister's grief, called brother forth, Bearing Adam's thorns, hung on a tree. And with wheezing thieves beside, Pulls up to breathe against the spikes. Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris Previous  §  Next

"Christus,"  Peter Eugene Ball ,  Winchester Cathedral ,  Winchester, U.K. When King Herod murders infants in Bethlehem,  Matthew's gospel uses words from Hebrew poet Jeremiah,  perhaps the only words that can express  the desperate, writhing vacancy of death.   “A voice was heard in Ramah,      wailing and loud lamentation, Rachel weeping for her children;      she refused to be consoled, because they are no more.” Jesus, who escaped Herod that night  later cries out from the cross in the words of Psalm 22,  “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The gospel writer seems to see Jesus's credibility in part  through the crucifixion's recapitulation of this Psalm:  The mocking crowd: “All who see me mock me;      they sneer at me; they shake their heads; 'Commit your cause to the Lord; let him deliver—      let him rescue the one in whom he delights!...

Song of created things: light, fire, stone, earth, wind, rain. Serpents,  God-planted trees, exile. Circumcision, promises, and wandering. A burning bush,  yet unconsumed. Call to experience by name. Stone tablets, giants, temples, kings, and forgetfulness. A promised rest, prayer, lions' dens, and silence. Previous  §  Next

Balsam root and lupine bloom along the glacier view trail,  Horse Lake Reserve, Wenatchee, Wash. Physicist and priest John Polkinghorn  speaks of “A creation in which creatures are allowed 'to make themselves.'” He's trying to explain how human moral evil  and suffering might come to be.  He also observes: “...the problem of evil is too profound  to be dealt with ... by any form of moral bookkeeping,  as if one were simply casting up creation's ethical profit-and-loss account....” For me, against the weight of all the world's suffering, the only satisfying possibility  is the idea God might somehow enter in. Previous  §  Next

Altar of Stadtkirche Lutherstadt Wittenberg, Germany,  altarpiece by Lucas Cranach; baptismal font in foreground  by Hermann der Ältere Vischer   In her essay “Facing Altars” the poet Mary Karr writes,  “Like poetry, prayer often begins in torment,  until the intensity of language forges a shape worthy of both labels:  'true' and 'beautiful.'” In churches I grew up in, there were hints that we expected  God to be physically at work.  We'd pray for healing.  And Pastor Dennis Cooper every month would read, "...But let a man examine himself,  and so let him eat of that bread,  and drink of that cup...." (1 Corinthians 11:28-29).              When I was baptized,               I felt the water,               and heard the invocation,               "Fat...