And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language?
–Acts 2:8
Once there was the the drip and the drain of her beginning to leave, the harrow of the clatter on the way to the operating room, the latch she formed when I was finally stable enough to hold her, the dry sob of my throat against her scream when she was ten days old and I learned, oh, sometimes they don’t eat or sleep or do anything but cry and there is absolutely nothing you can do— In short, there were no words, no mutually intelligible ones, no useful ones.
Now there is a grammar and a lexicon. Good morning! I love you. Did you have a good rest? Hug, kiss, fist bump? Fist bump! Pwwwsssshhhhh. Yeaaaaahhhh. Let’s— no, don’t peel the elephant— let’s change your diaper and— yes, Papa works at the lab, but not yet, we’ll see him in a minute— PB toast! yes, we can have PB toast for breakfast, let’s have some milk first but wait, let’s change your diaper first, oh now you’re ready for a kiss? Okay, kiss, now let’s change your diaper— It starts as something an adult English-speaking human would recognize and rapidly morphs into an intimate, singsong pidgin.
Pentecost, the birthday of the church, arrived with a violent wind, and with flame. With terror, one must imagine. With light and the power to destroy. And then with translation.
How is it that we hear each other? Because a spirit came among us to give us a new and native language.
Thank God for her, and for another year with her.
Photo credit: Isabella and Zsa Fischer on Unsplash
Have I 
For the Ash Wednesday service tonight at the Congregational Church of Patchogue, Pastor Dwight invited us to compose prayers around the events in Ukraine. In the spirit of the season of atonement, I wrote this one.
“We have grown far from the dirt,” Roy said, in his sermon a few weeks ago, and while I know what he means, I myself never feel very far from the dirt. Certainly not while watching Zoom church, which I’ve been doing in my home office space next to my Boston ferns, just barely holding on through the winter and shedding fronds at an alarming pace, while ensuring that Junia doesn’t eat stickers off the floor or color on the walls.
I watched church the week before, too, but I couldn’t write about it. Between crying at how much I missed being in a space with other people and trying to stop Junia from launching herself off the sofa, I can’t say I took many notes or thought too deeply about it. This past week, though, I was prepared. I had a pile of paper from my old life, handouts from classrooms I used to visit and agendas from meetings I used to attend, ready for her to scribble upon. I moved the church viewing area to my home office, where she could sprawl out on the floor or run around the upstairs reasonably safely when not sitting on my lap and waving at the Zoom boxes on the laptop screen. Still, even watching church from home is an effort. But I need to make it. There is a sea wall that being in community seems to build for me, one that is constantly under attack from the wind and waves of the tragedy, cruelty, and bullshit the world at large has to offer. I share some thoughts and hopes with others, take some of theirs home with me, and, maybe while I’m sleeping or drawing a crayon picture of a cat or cooking another meal destined to go only half-eaten, those thoughts and hopes fill the cracks in the wall.
I attended Micah’s workshop on prayer tonight, and the hands-on part of the workshop was a chance to write our own “tiny prayers,” loosely following a structure 
Forget what J.D. Vance and the Post would have you believe: it’s still perfectly safe to picnic with your little ones in Washington Square Park. I know, because I tested this theory with my tender thirteen-and-a-half-month old just this past Sunday, and she danced to “Johnny B. Goode” in front of the fountain and even tipped the piano player (with my money, of course, but it’s the practice that matters at this point; if you enjoy the busker, pay the man!). I didn’t doubt it, not exactly, but the rumors do reach one even all the way out here in the sticks of Suffolk County, and I wanted to believe I’d find the park more or less the same when I got there this past Sunday. And there they were: chalk artists, chess hustlers, dog walkers, vendors selling pins and balloons…all in their places, all right with the world.
It’s Thursday, and I’ve just finished watching Faith’s sermon from Sunday, which tells you something all by itself. It’s been a real week here. I’m not even sure why. Maybe this is the pandemic wall people talk and tweet about. I feel like I can’t think of another meal to make out of the standard grocery run items, like I can’t possibly watch any more TV, like I can’t bring myself to imagine that the world might be different in just a few short months. 
Abigail Myers 