The art of living · the storm
Storms
Some days the sky cracks open. The hard thing arrives — sudden, loud, sure of itself — and leaves a silence heavier than the noise it made. Here we don’t look away. We name them plainly, because even the breaking is part of the becoming.
Latest Storms
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Keep this love for grant writing!
Today, my team and I submitted three grants. This isn’t a praise post, but more so to encourage myself to keep rising to the things we love. Two of the three grants pushed me over the edge. One in particular, had me so down by the juggler that I would prefer simply to remain down.…
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Keep these devotions!
In the midst of another tornado, we spotted a rainbow. The rain was heavy, so was the day. Another tornado. The 4th one in a row. Clearly these days are not playing by the rules. Clearly tornadoes are rewriting the rules. Clearly, we are glad to be alive. Clearly glad to be breathing even if…
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Keep planting dreams!
To be drenched in a stream of flowing smiles, to see the smiles, your own and those of others, and smile letting this life and all it brings flow like ripples at the edge of two rivers, to know that smiles can be used for clarity, for conversations that feel like growth, for connections that…
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Keep the WashU LIGHT public health summer camp for children 3-8th grade!
If I was to linger for a little while, about a day, I would choose today, choose this very important day, where teachers taught and we listened and children taught and we listened and it’s as if both were necessary, teachers and children teaching, and listening, and perhaps we can have more trustworthy public within…
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Keep kindness!
Some words of kindness, unmeasured from my heart, are meant to remind you, remind me too, that this life, as measured and as unkind as it may be, still requires all of us to be kind.
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Keep these lessons of falling leaves!
Even if leaves descend, even if they descend brittle and frail to the ground below, even if they are swept away by wind or birds, leaving trees and branches empty and alone, at least they fell, they moved down before going up and away, and we are here, forgetting the lessons begin first on the…
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Keep walking!
Lucille Clifton once noted that ‘the surest failure is the unattempted walk.’ It was part of her poem entitled ‘Questions and answers.’ I am keeping this here because I have been walking through a path that feels so difficult that all I can keep doing is walking. So many times I wanted to quit. So…
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Keep resting in peace Ngugi!
What happens to words after they turn from one tongue to another? Do you think if say I begin with this life na je je, you go understand say me I no like wahala. In the fullness of a day, from the blossom of light in the morning to the twinkle of stars across dark…
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Keep this trust!
The idea of an entire sea within, one always expanding, full of love too from within you, with grace and gratitude, is the reason we trust. Above all else we are putting our trust in God and reminding ourselves like our son’s name, Olisa ga dubem…
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Keep this necessary suffering!
We often stay on a path that we are already on, even if it’s going nowhere. I’m learning these days that life is full of necessary suffering, full of losses and renewal, full of a downward part to growth and imperfection. For everything you have, always be prepared and plan to lose it, so that…
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Keep falling upward!
Some of us have been called to do something more. By grace and guts, we will do it.
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Keep these notes!
Her final notations of a life not simple, life not long, life not little, but a life full of thought, life full of heart, life full of air, is that life will still be short, it will still not be simple, and you will endure. A reminder: You can’t gatekeep global health from women who…