Published at Oregon Humanities She was nose down in dense clover, tail feathers up and wings askew like an ill-fated paper airplane. No movement, and seemingly no way to right her injured self from the expanses of oxalis that had overtaken my late-summer garden. Whenever a bird strikes my front window, my eyes dart in [...]
[Also published at The Christian Century.] Lent is approaching, a season associated with penitence (“regret for wrongdoing; contrition”), so perhaps we should talk about sin. Few theological concepts are as mangled and misinterpreted as the concept of sin. Yet we find the subject off-putting. We don’t understand it well because we prefer not to discuss [...]
“But I thought, of the wren's singing, what could this be if it isn't a prayer?” Mary Oliver (from "I Happened To Be Standing") One day in late 2017, I sat writing. On this morning I rode a fretful moment, the worry du jour being my first novel, Wren, for which I wasn’t finding a publisher. The challenge [...]
Over half of my life I operated from a perspective of scarcity. During that time, according to my skewed perception, everyone was a competitor or critic, always judging and potentially threatening, and nothing felt secure. It seemed just when I had something in hand, it would be whisked away. So everything had to be white-knuckled [...]
My first novel, Wren, has been released on Audible and Kindle! What readers are saying: "What a pleasure to find a book that beckoned me back every chance I had. Tricia Gates Brown is a skilled storyteller, an exceptionally good one.” Sue B., Amazon review "When I found myself pondering main character Wren's life, thoughts, [...]
This week an overheard conversation brought to mind a deeply regrettable goodbye. The memory stings, as such memories do; but unlike past times when I have buckled, winced, and looked away at the memory, I wanted this time to have compassion in the recalling. I wonder if we all need this: to return to regrets [...]
Attending Yoga at Winter SolsticeClass starts at five and already it’s dark.Radiant sconces in the Rec-Center yoga roomdraw us like men to a dusky bar on a rain-split night in December. Black locust trees twitch scarred branches outside the windows, stripped of their nimble fringe, as we fold bodies like quilts around suspended hearts, release our breath, laden with its [...]
Indispensable Season ~Tricia Gates Brown Summer ones live to be seen, pluck and do-da and who does not love them—all charge, splendor, hue? But winter ones live for the under sides, roots gnarled, long as bloodlines, fettered to books and burials; faces not seen on TV, but sifting media and message, tech and Technicolor, turned [...]
“LiFT” A close friend is going through a time. Many of us have been there: that place where old habits catch up to us and we are shunted onto new pathways by necessity—if we are to survive, and most certainly if we are to thrive. These crossroad experiences are painful, but they are also what [...]
“Wade in the water. God’s gonna trouble the water.” In the centuries-old spiritual, we’re told to wade into the healing water because God will “trouble” the water. In the song, “to trouble” is an old word meaning “to stir up,” and doesn’t necessarily have the modern meaning of trouble as “distress or pain.” But my [...]
The Hulu series “The Handmaid’s Tale,” based on the novel by Margaret Atwood, takes place in a dystopian United States where the vast majority of inhabitants can no longer have children. In response to this crisis, an authoritarian governmental structure allows those in power to subjugate fertile women, forcing them to work as “handmaids” (sex/birth [...]
Last week I watched the new documentary about Mr. Rogers entitled Won’t You be my Neighbor?, so he is impressed on my mind as I absorb details of the mass shooting at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, in the community of Squirrel Hill, which was Fred Roger’s real neighborhood. My heart is a [...]
Have you ever participated in a Maundy Thursday foot washing? I find the ritual amusing. What amuses me is the awkwardness of most people, the squeamishness about touching others, the discomfort with an act so unfamiliar and so intimate. I’ve observed many people choosing to pair up with a close family member for the act, [...]
“The psalmist doesn't try to explain evil. He doesn't try to minimize evil. He simply says he will not fear evil. …When somebody takes your hand in the dark, you’re not afraid of the dark anymore.” —Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark As I write this essay in early September, I ride rapids of fear [...]
When I moved from Oregon’s Willamette Valley to the north Oregon coast in 2004, it was a leap. I parachuted out of a life that no longer accommodated into a 10-month sojourn of dis-illusionment, dismantling, and radiant transformation in a tiny Oceanside, Oregon duplex on a cliff overhanging the Pacific. The move began as a [...]
Matthew 17:14-20 may not be your favorite Jesus story if you or someone you love has chronic illness. It is not among my favorites. I live with chronic illness and am familiar with simplistic religious formulas around healing and wellness, along with the guilt or disappointment the chronically ill sometimes experience because we haven’t been [...]
As I often do, I turned for inspiration for this essay to the lectionary readings of the day. Among them: two vengeance Psalms, a grisly murder narrative from Esther, and a fire-and-brimstone ditty from the Gospel of Matthew, with its characteristic presaging of weeping and the oddly outmoded gnashing of teeth. Among them, not one [...]
Over half of my life I operated from a perspective of scarcity. During that time, according to my skewed perception, everyone was a competitor or a critic, always judging and potentially threatening, and nothing felt secure. It seemed just when I had something in hand, it would be whisked away, so everything had to be [...]
A clip from my audio journal on a moment of reconciliation between two elderly monks.
A clip from my audio journal about ego wrestling, and learning to surrender to growth.
Jesus knew what it meant to be pigeon-holed. His town of Nazareth had a population of just a few hundred people, and most of his ministry took place around the Sea of Galilee, just 19 miles from his hometown. Beyond that, many of the gospel stories take place around Capernaum, and the distance from Jesus’ [...]
Since early June, I've been keeping an audio journal. Now and then, I will share a clip. This clip is about the difference between a religion and a "spiritual tradition."
{Essay excerpted from Season of Wonder, Frederick Press, 2016} Of late, several of my close companions are animals. Two cats, a neighbor horse, a neighbor dog. I am close to them in ways I am close to few others, though I have a bevy of family and friends who keep me floating on rivers of [...]
Throughout his ministry, Jesus challenged every boundary people used to define and separate themselves—ethnic boundaries, geographical boundaries, purity boundaries, moral-legal boundaries, relational boundaries, boundaries between humans and animals, adults and children, men and women. Jesus didn’t stop at material boundaries, but went on to demonstrate with his life that everything is spiritual—there is no [...]
Luke 6:43-44: No good tree bears bad fruit, nor again does a bad tree bear good fruit; for each tree is known by its own fruit. Figs are not gathered from thorns, nor are grapes picked from a bramble bush. Here we are, on the cusp of the new millennium’s third decade, and all around [...]