Continuing my transformation into a Western Massachusetts woo-woo hippie, this past Saturday I had my first professional Tarot card reading with Carolyn Cushing at Art of Change Tarot. That evening, my husband and I attended the last 20 minutes of Amherst’s Extravaganja festival (you really haven’t lived till you’ve seen a mom shopping for bongs
The Hierophant or the Ink Blot Test Read More »
Is it just a coincidence that April is both National Child Abuse Prevention Month and National Poetry Month? (Hat tip to Love, Joy, Feminism.) In that spirit, I’d like to share some excellent articles I’ve discovered this month about family trauma and recovery, and a poem from my new collection, My Miserable Life…oops, I meant
April Is the Cruelest Month: Mommie Dearest Links Roundup Read More »
Ysabel de la Rosa edits the online journal Getting Along with Grief, a home for poetry, memoir, other prose, and artwork about life after loss. In an email conversation between us during Holy Week, we got onto the topic of Christian interpretations of suffering. We were both struggling with the ways that our spiritual traditions
Recovery, Not Return: A Conversation About Faith and Suffering Read More »
Happy Easter! As I mentioned earlier on the blog, I gave up doubting my intuition for Lent. That’s a practice I certainly hope to continue through Easter season and beyond. I often “give up” things that have a religious stamp of approval but are actually blocking me from hearing and trusting God. Lent was unusually
Easter Thoughts: God’s Joy and Ours Read More »
Christian artist Mary Button’s annual series of “Stations of the Cross” collage-paintings depict the torture and execution of Christ in the context of a social justice issue. For instance, last year’s Stations took on the injustice of mass incarceration in America. The 2015 series is devoted to mental illness. In the artist’s words, it “addresses
Stations of the Cross: Mental Illness Read More »
The final season of the AMC TV drama “Mad Men” begins this Sunday, filling me with anticipation and some first stirrings of withdrawal as I contemplate saying goodbye to my idol, Peggy Olson (above). How to keep the magic alive? Leah Umansky’s poetry chapbook Don Dreams and I Dream (Kattywompus Press, 2014) sustains that lingering
Leah Umansky’s “Mad Men” Inspired Poetry Read More »
Inclusive Church is a UK-based resource for making the Church of England more welcoming and sensitive to diversity around sexuality, race, class, disability, and mental health. The latter topic caught my attention during my ongoing search for materials for a trauma survivors’ Christian study group. What’s great about Inclusive Church is that they see the
Survivor-Centric Liturgy: An Example from Inclusive Church (UK) Read More »
In Holy Week, which begins next weekend with Palm Sunday, Christians all over the world meditate on Jesus’s suffering and death. Catholics and some Episcopalians enact the liturgical drama of the Stations of the Cross, depicting the events leading up to the crucifixion. There are many ways to find ourselves in this story,
Lenten Reading: “The Passion of Christ: A Gay Vision” Read More »
I wrote last month about my new attraction to tarot cards as a source of archetypal images that nurture my intuitive side. My starter guidebook, The Tarot Bible by Sarah Bartlett, works off of the Universal Waite deck, the most mainstream and familiar version of the modern tarot. As I discovered at Namaste Bookshop, there
Queering the Tarot: Gender Roles and Diversity Read More »
My new poetry collection Bullies in Love (Little Red Tree Publishing, 2015) had a successful book launch party this weekend at Forbes Library in Northampton, MA. My collaborator, fine art photographer Toni Pepe, gave a fascinating presentation about her artistic process, inspired by sources as diverse as Old Masters paintings, family snapshots, and Cindy Sherman’s
“Bullies in Love” Book Launch Video Read More »