By Anna Blaedel A few weeks ago, with my two younger niblings, I was trying to describe daily life before cell phones, Siri, Google, Alexa. I told them about entire albums, listened to as an event, and about card catalogs and encyclopedia sets, and having to wait, and wonder, when we do not know....

By Robert Monson “If you get there before I do, Coming for to carry me home; Tell all my friends I'm coming too, Coming for to carry me home.” - Swing Low, Sweet Chariot We gotta go someplace Piano melodies fill my home every single morning as the darkness hovers outside. I like to get up early...

By Anna Blaedel part 1: About a month ago, I found myself stretched out on a concrete floor, eyes closed, surrounded by three dear friends, who were also stretched out on a concrete floor, in an otherwise empty room. One was visiting from far away, and we were all sharing stories of life’s twists...

By Anna Blaedel I believe in mystery. I believe in magic. I believe in miracles.* I believe in intuition. I believe Spirit seeks connection, through stars and trees and soil and flesh and beauty blooming and every movement of freedom and mobilization toward liberation. I believe divinity is...

By M Jade Kaiser I recently learned through a gorgeous essay by Anisa George — whose wisdom this entire essay merely echoes — that periodical cicadas spend either 13 or 17 years (depending on which species) beneath the soil’s surface. 17 years! Just hanging out in the underground. Not hibernating....

By Anna Blaedel Last week I skipped my (self-imposed) curfew and stayed out way past my (early-by-choice) bedtime to hear a former student play a show with his touring band. It was resplendent, seeing him so vibrantly alive, making and sharing music. He radiated the particular beauty of sharing...

By Anna Blaedel The following is an excerpt from Anna Blaedel’s in-process dissertation, in which they weave a theopoetics of collective liberation by tracing and reconnecting lineages of divergent sacred wisdom circulating and emerging among poet-activists, freedom dreamers, prophets, mystics,...

By Anna Blaedel I still remember a poemprayer by Ted Loder I first encountered on a retreat sometime toward the end of high school. I prayed it regularly, for years: Empower me to be a bold participant, rather than a timid saint in waiting in the difficult ordinariness of now; to exercise the...

By Anna Blaedel When the heat of late summer was starting to show signs of fading, and twilight’s shadows shifted their descent into earlier evening, a dear friend who only ever reads non-fiction recommended I read a particular novel. I was, and am, immersed in the last months–the final stretch–of...

By Anna Blaedel In a 1977 speech about children’s literature and the creative spirit, poet June Jordan offered a three-word statement of belief that has become foundational to my own faith, a plumbline for my theology and spiritual practice: “Love is lifeforce.” A few nights ago I had a vivid...

By Anna Blaedel We cannot afford to cease yearning for each other’s company. –M. Jacqui Alexander Two weeks ago, I found myself under the remnants of a dear one’s sukkah, remaining after Sukkot, the recounting of desert wandering, morphed into shiva. Invitations to ritualize the close of shabbat...

By Anna Blaedel Not too long ago, I found myself sitting between beloveds under a moonlit sky, watching a community theater production of Our Town. I had not seen Our Town since playing the part of Mrs. Gibbs while in high school. Time bent, as lines I had not heard for over two decades washed...

By Anna Blaedel Eleven years ago today, my oldest nibling was born. It is one of my greatest joys in life, witnessing this human’s being, and becoming. She is funny and creative and caring, and wants, always, to have a good book within reach. One of her first words was “bug;” she taught me about...

By Anna Blaedel My scriptural canon includes lines of poetry, refrains from songs, bits of phrasing that I encounter in books, conversations, fragments of memory, manifestors, stories told and retold. One piece of scripture I turn to almost daily comes from the poem “The Summer Day,” by Mary...

By Anna Blaedel “If you look at the field beside the road and you see merely the generic ‘meadow,’ you’re less likely to care if it’s bulldozed for a strip mall than you are if you know that those tall, flat-leaved spires are milkweed, upon which the monarchs have flown two thousand miles to feed,...