Kiano

Posted on August 22, 2026 by Elea Lee

First, I was hit hard by your story, your extreme youth, your face in the photo, then I was hit by the strangeness of the term.

Is this, like the MAID, the pharmaceutical death, and the ornate Cross on the logo, another Canadian difference? What is this “enichement?”

Google corrected my search twice to “enrichment,” before I found the true meaning.

The similarities are haunting—two young men go willingly to their deaths.

One buys drugs at a local pharmacy and dies in a funeral home.

The other endures the torture of a Roman execution.

Both are entombed.

But what happens after that depends entirely on the power of the older man

To be

The Resurrection and the Life.

John 11:1,3,14,21-26 KJV
[1] Now a certain man was sick, named Lazarus, of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. [3] Therefore his sisters sent unto him, saying, Lord, behold, he whom thou lovest is sick. [14] Then said Jesus unto them plainly, Lazarus is dead. [21] Then said Martha unto Jesus, Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. [22] But I know, that even now, whatsoever thou wilt ask of God, God will give it thee. [23] Jesus saith unto her, Thy brother shall rise again. [24] Martha saith unto him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. [25] Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: [26] And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

https://www.vesciofuneralhome.com/memorials/kiano-vafaeian/5675301

The Organizing Man

Posted on August 21, 2026 by Elea Lee

I stop by the Goodwill to look for bins that could be used to wash clothes or organize them if the machine is transformed by answered prayers and there is a shelf with sheets that bear a passing resemblance to those I once bought for my mother’s house transformed first to a short term rental and then back to a family home.

Maybe the roosters just sound the alarm because of the light of the fire like a tiny sun from near earth waking them from peaceful slumber

What if he gave them away? Who? You ask

The organizing man

Nice enough to strangers

One of whom I am become.

The Williams of Heaven

Posted on August 15, 2026 by Elea Lee

https://www.fox19.com/2026/08/14/3-suspects-plead-not-guilty-death-7-year-old-william-evans-ellis/

Hey, kid

I have been working on something lately that (tragically)

Reminds me of you

It started with the question of how “you” could transmit hope to a distant “stone-age” tribe

What symbols would “you” need to

Stand in for Man

Stand in for Woman

Stand in for child

Stand in for God

Stand in for Pain-Brutality-Disenfranchised-Sorrow

Abandonment. Near total abandonment.

By now you recognize where I am going with this—Substitutionary Atonement

For the lamb, the goat, the chicken, the child, the man, the monster

Living then dying inside the universal symbol for In-all-my-years-of-law-enforcement….

This is what ellipsis is for

All the Williams of Heaven

We will see each other again

And this time you will tell your whole terrible story

Through the Universal Translator

God with us.

Matthew 18:3-7 KJV
[3] And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. [4] Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. [5] And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. [6] But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. [7] Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!

Matthew 23:37 KJV
[37] O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not!

News of His enthronement

Posted on July 11, 2026 by Elea Lee

In my head the news comes

Across the radio

Wafting through

The ordinary work—

Washing, mending, sorting

Clothes pinned to lines in the sun

While the reporters tell overlapping stories

Of a man amidst the mob

Soldiers plaiting thorns

World,

Your King has come

Naked, silent, broken, abused, mocked, slandered, burned in the fire

For my place,

I take the ordinary

thorns

Plait a crown

Just to push into farthest edge of the terrible howl

He takes for us

Here I am, Adonai

Posted on June 14, 2026 by Elea Lee

I know a man who is fighting to live in order to be there for his wife. His struggle, pain, and uncertainty are deeply courageous, but also scary.

When physics seems inexorable, then believing in the deus ex machina makes a person look pretty crazy..

But I am not talking about Aeschylus or even Plutarch, I am talking about Jesus.

He doesn’t need to save a weak plot with a contrived entrance, and he does very incisively predict his own return.

I want to “pray deeper.” I want to pray the way I swim, respirate, or walk up a hill.

I want to spend the time I have imploring God to do impossible things now and forever after.

I need to keep my eyes on Jesus. He is the God Who Saves.

Beagles, Babies, and “Became”

Posted on April 21, 2026 by Elea Lee

Isaiah 46:12-13 KJV
[12] Hearken unto me, ye stouthearted, that are far from righteousness: [13] I bring near my righteousness; it shall not be far off, and my salvation shall not tarry: and I will place salvation in Zion for Israel my glory.

This week there was an assault on a farm in Wisconsin that raises beagles for research purposes because they “are trusting, loyal, and easy to handle.”

In England, two men are on trial for unspeakable abuse of a baby they adopted then abused to death.

Jesus became the embodiment of unspeakable horror to pay for unspeakable pain. He bore our sins then bore the holy wrath of God.

He became the sacrificial beagle for the sacrificed baby.

When the minor griefs of my quotidian life hit me hard in my chest, I have to keep my eyes fixed on Jesus. I have to tell Him that I cannot fathom the depths of the horror He endured for this broken, afflicted, heartbroken world.

The wrath of a Righteous God

For the broken beagle

For the broken baby

For the broken-hearted

He is coming back soon

She says

Posted on April 14, 2026 by Elea Lee

“That was too short!“

I tell her that it would have been longer if

She had been quiet faster

Will you write another one if I am quiet? She asks

Hard to, nay impossible to,

Say no

Beautiful mockingbird

Origami daughters

Their hair ribbons of color and light like their mothers

Were-are-will be

“nothing shall be impossible”

Wind! Birds! Mockingbird! Mother!

He is

The wind that shakes the trees, lifts the wings

Heals the world

(John chapter 3–all of it!)

Pareidolia

Posted on April 9, 2026 by Elea Lee

Within days of the end of an era I lay beneath a cloudy night sky and drew faces from slow moving clouds and stars and planets

I resisted the urge to cup your face in my hand or bang the flats of my palms against the heavy plate glass of the cathedral

Yell your name

But I had to

Had to

Touch the hem of your garment

Pray you turn and say my name

How to want…to be His friend

Posted on April 3, 2026 by Elea Lee

You have to see past the blood—your own and his

The stinging sweat and the jeering crowds

The voice in your own pounding brain

Nay, voices—

Saying that no king of anything could die like this

Alone and vulnerable in the dumpster fire of all

You have to focus on his eyes

What he sees and what is reflected in them

Love beyond measure/sky without end

And you must listen to his voice

Agony is too small a word for what he has done for us

The fire of the wrath of a holy God

Substitutionary Everything

Nothing left without Him.

The Parables

Posted on March 15, 2026 by Elea Lee

Jesus knows that his beloved followers will need things to hold onto as they undergo the crushing persecution and ostracism of the first years (300ish) of Christianity.

So he gives them stories—stories so vivid and memorable and simple and beautiful that they can go back again and again to these stories to nourish them in the dark places they will find themselves in as followers of The Way.

The parable are rooms we can live in, stories we can inhabit, people and places and symbols we can return to again and again

As we wait in dark places

For the Return of the King.

Carrying Light

Words for light

Category Archives: grief