Posts Tagged ‘Shannon Huffman Polson’
Wabi-Sabi: Living with Beauty and Ugliness
July 30, 2018
Yesterday, a man might have killed me. Both receptionists were away from the counter when I entered the waiting room for a physical therapy appointment. The waiting room, shared by several different offices, was lonely in mid-morning with only one man wearing all black and headphones sitting slightly hunched. I took a seat as far…
Read MoreThe Narratives We Need: Part 2
May 3, 2018
Recently I sang Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem with the Seattle Symphony. In his adaptation of The Requiem, Britten juxtaposes Wilfred Owen’s poetry with the Latin mass. The male soloists sing Owen’s poem “The Parable of the Old Men and the Young,” the story of Abraham and Isaac, right up to the angel and the ram.…
Read MoreThe Final Roll Call
November 10, 2016
As a little girl, I remember watching the grownups in my hometown Episcopal church cross themselves, and feeling like there was a secret I was not yet privy to but wanted to know. Sometime in high school, I started crossing myself at will, at the “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” mentions, but also before and…
Read MoreSeeking Refuge
September 11, 2015
I’d just put my two young sons to bed when I opened the computer to see the picture of Aylan. My sons are two and five, and the youngest has round soft legs, like Aylan, and little shoes, like Aylan. I saw the picture of Aylan and felt my blood go cold. That day I…
Read MoreThe Eucharist: Eat, Eat!
June 10, 2015
My son makes the sign he learned before he could say his first words, fingers and thumb together at the side of his mouth. He’s hungry. He’s asking.
Read MoreA Blaze of Holy Unease, Part 2
February 11, 2014
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin saw creation as dynamic in matter and spirit, and understood the world and specifically human consciousness as continually evolving. He believed creation to be the process of divine incarnation, all of the world perpetually moving toward God. The process was not and could not yet be complete. As a result “nothing is profane here below for those who have eyes to see.” All is sacred.
Read MoreA Blaze of Holy Unease, Part 1
February 10, 2014
As I drove home from the Methow Valley a week ago, I listened to Krista Tippett interview Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggemann. Around me the mountains of the Cascades softened as they declined into the Columbia River Valley, a part of the scablands of eastern Washington scoured by the Missoula flood during the Pleistocene Epoch.
Read MoreEve, the Apple, and the Need To Know: The Imago Dei Project
October 29, 2013
I’ve been thinking about Genesis lately. In this past month, the lectionary included Eve’s succumbing to the serpent and my study group talked about the troubling fallout in perceptions of gender roles, about what might have happened if Eve hadn’t eaten the apple, about a human tendency toward disobedience.
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