homegrown poetry and prose
Nevermind the sunlight
with its whispers of another try.
Blacken out dawn’s maddening grin,
and in your everlasting dark
scribble over every dream
that dares to pry its way inside.
Simply plug your ears and scream
over hope’s sadistic singing
till you are left alone
under the comfortable
covers of despair,
cocooned in stillness
and commiseration,
not threatened by the awful glow
of any hard-earned glory
that you haven’t known.
A handful of strange truths: kids love it when I play with them, I really want to be a mom, I don’t like playing with kids, and I’m terrified of being locked up in a house with them if my own dream comes true. Contradictory? Eh.
“You’d make a great mom,” my fiancé says. I’ve heard it many times before—but inside, I’m not so sure. I’d make a great AUNT, I want to correct him. The truth is that my toddler patience has an expiration date of approximately one hour, some days more, some days less. During that hour, I know how to enchant a child so that they’re giggling themselves into little pretzels, and it’s great, but it also feeds my dread of real parenting. Because invariably, silly-happy pretzel children begin to beg me incessantly for nonstop MORE. They follow me around the house, sniffing me out like beagles if I try to hide in an unused bedroom and get some actual work done. They defy all adult conversations that I so desperately long for, shouting SARAH SARAH LOOK SARAH LOOK AT THIS HEY SARAH over anything I try to say to another human. They wear me out, and then I deflate and stop being fun. But even then they still want more, because they can only remember that deliriously magical Lego smashing session from five hours ago and not the digital-clicking bore of an adult from two minutes ago. I am doomed to children by my own fondness for children.
Aunt: the person who gets to drop in, wild up someone else’s toddler, and then waltz back into her own easy-breezy life when the fun wears off, retaining soaring levels of popularity with the toddler (and a subsequent ego boost) in exchange for minimal work.
Mom: the ultimate prisoner.
But now, I’m actually on the verge of becoming an aunt for the very first time, and that plus the realization that I’m about to move away from my two sweet almost-nephews has given me the energy to stretch that hour longer than necessary. And yesterday, I remembered why back when I babysat toddlers for eight hours a day, three days a week, I actually thought that playing with kids was fun:
Because playing with kids isn’t fun—but teaching them is.
When I’m only trying to play with littles, then I’m mindlessly matching their every whim. You want another round of making car sound effects while we zoom down the couch? Okay. Car sound effects, take 116. I want to smash my head into the TV screen, but that would be a bad example for my watching little, so I don’t. But when I’m actually scheming new ways to infect my unsuspecting little with knowledge, independence, growth, maturity, and practice, I’m back in the driver’s seat. I’m creatively scheming new ways to sneak competence, goodness, life, and blessing into a three-year-old whose entire attention is currently consumed by Hotwheels. This is a game, because the rules are a little different every time, and I’ve got to feel my own way forward: how can I combine fun play, meaningful relational connection, and new knowledge or skills all into one Pied Piper moment?
Vocab is an easy go-to and always important, and itty-bitties absorb it all up without so much as a question half the time. Just try it: pick a new word and start working it into your play as often as possible during a few sessions in a row. Act it out when you can. Say it back to back with its definition: “I’m at the peak of the mountain! I’m at the very top of the mountain!” or “This hula hoop is fragile. It breaks easily.” Toddlers are wickedly smart learners, because they just take it all in, and then all of a sudden they’re parroting that exact phrase back to you—correctly—without you ever asking them to say it. Absolutely incredible.
But I also love telling them what I know about life, because this false idea that toddlers only care about their own toys and kid shows is silly. They actually get a blast out of learning. “Teach me, Sarah!” “Okay. What should I teach you?” “Teach me about French fries.” So first we talk about how it comes from potatoes, and that brings us to the fact that the carrot on his plate was originally underground, and then we’re onto the digestive system. I make a rhythmic chant out of it and trace the journey of every item on his plate: first you chew the rice up NOM NOM NOM, then you swallow it GULP, and then it falls dooooowwwwwn your throat and it falls dooooowwwwwn your esophagus, and where does it land?! “IN THE WATER IN MY BELLY!” That’s right; it lands in your stomach SPLISH! And then the stomach acid GURRRRRRR breaks it down into teeeeny-tiny pieces, and those go all the way through your body and make you STRONG! We do it again and again, and boom, he’s got it. Eventually, I add on intestines and waste. I mean, come on—why not? He’s three, but he’s perfectly capable of understanding the digestive system, and he’s fascinated by it.
And it isn’t just facts alone that are fun; teaching includes skills and developing a strong internal locus of control. Sometimes, weaving moments of growth into our play is as simple as gently saying no when he asks me to get something for him and reminding him, “You’re a big boy. I think you can get it.” Then when he does, I’m quick to swoop in with the praise and recognition of a job well done. Sometimes, it looks like making my stuffed animal talk about his emotions to practice healthy emotional processing, even if it’s at a simplified (and constantly silly!) level. And sometimes, it’s as small as holding the baby’s arms up to help him practice assisted walking again and again and again. It doesn’t really matter what domain each of them is growing in at the moment—I just get a rush out of seeing them conquer something new, spread their wings a little further, grin as they push their way forward toward becoming good men.
Here’s what’s strange: we’ve co-opted play from its original intent and dumbed it down to a pastime for kids when it was always meant to be about the serious work of turning into adults. Okay, that was admittedly an oversimplification; play also exists to simply be play. But if that’s all it ever is, then half its joy becomes stunted, because it was never meant to end there. Of course most adults don’t enjoy playing with children; we weren’t supposed to! Though the silliness itself can be delightful at times, our role isn’t supposed to stop there—we have the power to invest play with deeper meaning every time we jump in. Kids were made to naturally love playing and, yes, learning—and maybe it’s just me, but I suspect that adults were made to naturally love equipping kids to grow and mature in healthy ways.
You know what’s fun? Watching little people flourish.
Busyness expands like oxygen:
no matter how many tasks
you actually have,
it spreads wide to fill
the space it’s in.
for the sweet Kichwa girl whom God has not forgotten
Oh our Father who art in heaven,
the soles of whose feet
are dirty with earth,
when an indigenous kid
is kidnapped and killed
and stretched out unburied far from home,
unmourned because of the native blood
that for fifteen rainy seasons danced her veins
in languages too satin, too delicate
for this money-punch crowd to comprehend,
she isn’t just another sparrow to You,
some native statistic out in the bush
who will never make the local news.
No, You stitched this girl together
from the crest where sunlight sparks on river,
from the birdsong that mixes with monkey chatter
and the stories that drift over open fires.
Now You sit vigil at her side,
cup her hair in Your hands and make lament.
You sing it the way her papa should have
and press Your scars, somehow still fresh,
against the wounds
that the world left open.
One day You will rise up
and avenge her death,
string her name like an arrow
in the bow of Your justice,
grown taut with patience—
but this evening You simply sit at her side
and cover her corpse
with the shadow of Your wings.
You will rise up, yes,
but there is an order of things,
and first You must show us
how to let ourselves feel it,
let ourselves weep,
how to love the least of these so much
we climb on their crosses with them
and bleed.
On Monday, Governor Newsom announced that a team of non-essential workers in need of new jobs would begin constructing a 90-foot tall golden statue in downtown Los Angeles this week. Upon completion of the statue, every Sunday morning an image of the golden statue would be livestreamed throughout the state at 10 am, at which time all residents of California would be required to stand in front of their houses and watch the image on their mobile devices. As soon as the livestream began to play music, all California residents would then be required to bow down prostrate in front of their cell phones and worship the image.
A few local Christians complained about the ordinance as a violation of their freedom of religion. However, Newsom’s secretary quickly reminded Californians that since Newsom had already outlawed church meetings due to the coronavirus crisis, Christians’ schedules should be open on Sunday mornings, so they should have no conflict of interest in attending the worship of the image.
Indeed, many prominent pastors spoke up in support of Newsom’s statue mandate. “These are unprecedented times, in spite of what Ecclesiastes 1 says about there being nothing new under the sun,” one commented. “Therefore, it makes sense to suspend ordinary application of scriptural principles about not making a graven image or worshiping anything other than God, because neither coronavirus nor cell phones even existed when the Bible was written. Honestly, what could such archaic people know about dictatorial governments, catastrophic plagues, beautiful images that appeal to the masses, or the relentless pressure to conform? We have to understand the Bible within our own context, which means worshiping this digital image of the golden statue.”
“Everyone is just doing the best they can in these times of coronavirus,” another faceless pastor who just blended in with the mob behind him added. “We’ve had a lot of division in our nation these past few months, and Jesus would want us to get along and avoid conflict at all costs, like He did. This golden image is something that finally brings us all together, as long as we all obey the government mandate and punish those who disagree until we have blotted their names from the face of the earth.”
When polled, 87% of California pastors agreed that a careful reading of Romans 13 means that we should do anything the government tells us to, including bowing down and worshiping a golden image, and 84% strongly agreed with the statement, “Since all authority is established by God, anything a government official tells us to do was God’s idea, which means that God is currently most glorified by us worshiping Newsom’s golden image.”
However, a few extremists pushed back with claims that the Bible is full of examples of God fearers who practiced political dissent when the governing authorities required them to violate their religious beliefs, using a rallying cry of “We must obey God rather than men” (a quote falsely attributed to the apostles Peter and John, but proved to be fake news by a Snopes article). Thankfully, most of the members of that dangerous anarchist group have already been taken off the streets after caught praying in the name of Jesus last week in clear defiance of Newsom’s previous mandate, which made it illegal for residents of 30 counties to pray to anyone other than himself.
“Have I heard the comparisons to the book of Daniel? Sure,” laughed a more popular pastor. “These fire and brimstone types will twist Scripture to make any dimwitted political point they want to. Frankly, they’re scared of science, and they don’t have compassion for other people. What is happening in California right now has nothing to do with the book of Daniel. Besides, look at this meme making fun of those holier-than-thou idiots! See how big their noses are in this picture?! Gosh, they’re all such hypocrites! I hope they get eaten by a lion or burned up by the fires of global warming.”
At the time of press release, Newsom had not yet specified what the golden statue would actually be an image of. Some speculated that it would be a statue of himself, while others contended that it would be a spiky coronavirus ball or a locked prison door. Conspiracy theories circulating online suggest that it will be an image of a giant chocolate bunny, though it is unclear where that idea came about or what it is supposed to represent.
One day your good news
stopped having anything to do
with Jesus
and became a revolutionary organic cream,
a real Messiah of a product line
that you simply had to sell,
had to tell everyone you knew about,
again and again
even when they’re not asking,
shamelessly witnessing.
You will fill your conversations
with this nutrient-packed pill,
saturate your social circles
with oils called “necessary.”
You will blast it on the internet
and leave little pamphlets
like cheesy tracts
behind you in a trail
that leads straight to your bank account.
This is good news,
indeed.
Sometimes, when faith comes up
with an atheist,
you dodge your way out of the topic—
you don’t want to come across
as a pushy believer,
don’t want to risk relationships here.
You get back to your product.
Hey, something’s got to change your life,
revitalize your doldrum days
and the dry tips of your hair.
It might as well be
goat-milk coconut serum.
You might as well put your hope
and your courage there.
You have to lock the strongest hearts
behind bars sometimes.
Though it isn’t fair—
though it may not be right—
The darkness needs to keep them there,
not because it’s mean,
but because it’s scared
of the buried power and the love-tipped prayers,
the glaring light that might leak wide
on the bleak-eyed shadows
if it let them loose.
But the goodness, too, and the champions
and the angel armies all agree
that it’s best not to break in
and set them free,
not because they’re uncaring,
but because they know
that strong hearts need iron
to help them grow.
They can take the metal,
though it bruises their souls—
they can make it out,
though not alone.
Their fingers, too thin,
will toughen to pry
the ceiling open into sky.
Strong hearts sometimes cry—
but they still come out stronger,
and when pain multiplies,
they just hold out longer.
Sometimes justice turns its head
as they lock an innocent heart away
because mercy remembers
the powerless prisoners,
the weak and the wobbly,
sick and unsteady
who’ve forgotten to fight
every guard that’s in sight,
who need a strong heart’s hand to hold,
need to hear a strong song
blast notes of hope
through the underground empty
and the frozen below.
Great men need prison
and all its compassion,
for strong hearts recall,
and they always come back
to rescue the next heart trapped
in that same old cage,
saying, “I know the way out.
And I will keep you safe.”
Heroes aren’t born;
they grow from the ground.
They’re buried in holes,
and they break their way out.
Be careful, little heart, what you learn,
because once you know
that your soul is your own,
you can never forget—
and they will hate you for that.
My little sister didn’t get the point
of a dollhouse no one played with,
the dream home that kept me alone in my room:
crisp corners and tiny doors,
Victorian blue and beautiful,
three short stories high
and mine all mine to design.
My little sister longed for the days when we played house
in the cold concrete basement of cousin Jackie,
who interrupted the action because
who kept interrupting the
who stopped the game again to say,
“Now pretend like you say—”
My little sister missed the primordial days of her toddlerhood
when we played with her small plastic house
in our shared room, when she wouldn’t play the way
I told her to—and I was older.
Like a bitter housewife, I thirsted for control,
so instinct taught me to lunge for the throat
and to squeeze, to clamp, to strangle
with all the self-centeredness I would one day repress
into dainty miniature curtains she wasn’t allowed to touch.
Backyard Apricots 