One day a few summers ago I got home from work and sat down outside on the deck. I was reading The Hungering Dark by Frederick Buechner, specifically the third chapter, “The Calling of Voices,” in which he discusses vocation.  I took notes. You, like me, may ask yourself, What makes me glad? Good question. […]

A friend and I were discussing our present seasons of spirituality. She summarized hers this way: “It’s a collaboration.” If we follow God, we also collaborate with him. In true collaboration there is room for diversity of personal opinions, discussion, divergence, disagreement and, as a result, new and creative ways of believing and practicing belief. […]

“You’re going to be afraid if you don’t write and afraid when you do write, so you may as well write and be afraid,” says a friend as we—she and her husband and their two young children and I—sit at the dinner table in their rented house after eating Thai takeout and it comes up: […]

What forms does it take? What shapes and patterns? What stories reveal and explain it? What does leaving look like for you? Is it geographical, familial, spiritual, personal? Did you leave or were you left? Did you leave because you were left behind by family, community, friends, church, even God? Do you feel forsaken by […]

It was just over a year ago, the day after work ended for the season. I took a walk after the first autumn snowfall. The streets were only wet. Snow barely clung to the trees as it warmed, though the air remained damp and chilly. I was nervous, phone in hand waiting to make the […]

It’s a Sunday in early-mid October. I sleep in and wake up to a few new inches of overnight snow, seen through the window opposite the bed when I open my eyes.  I take it slow—coffee, morning pages, more coffee, silence, stretching, pancakes—then leave the house for a walk, my body pulsing with the low-grade […]

Some days the work comes so hard. You’re insecure and self-doubtful and you hate whatever you make. What’s the point? you ask yourself. Why bother? Then you let the thoughts and emotions pass through and get back to work.  My personal challenge right now is this: don’t think about how you feel, and don’t feel […]

You can’t tell me that God does not break his (or her or its) own rules and move past his own boundaries (or perhaps they’re only ours, human) to meet those on the edge or who have jumped off, who left. To sit with them in their pain and the story of their leaving, whether […]

Hey there. I’m Nielsen. I just got back from a trip. I hiked, biked, and truck-camped my way through British Columbia, the Yukon, and Alaska, along with a little backpacking here and there. Needless to say, it was a long time to live out of a truck, rain or shine. Now what? I moved into a […]