Melinda Emily Thomas

Category: Essays

  • Chickens and Goats

    In the November 30th episode of the Daily Show the host, Trevor Noah, commented on the CNN report by Nima Elbagir et al. on the slave trade in Libya saying, “. . . In 2017 you don’t expect the breaking news to be ‘Slave Auctions are Back.’” Sadly, the slave auction in Libya is breaking…

  • Surprise

    In my outdoor storage closet sit six containers of Christmas decorations: a tall tree, a set of Alpine trees, a set of wreathes, a box of ornaments, a box of miscellaneous décor, and a box containing my Christmas village. For the most part, everything gets used. I’ve donated or gotten rid of the excess. The…

  • Fill Your Hands with Mud

    I’m feeling ambivalent about the holidays this year. Until a few months ago I thought ambivalent meant not caring. But then, while watching the Daniel Tiger episode “Daniel’s Day of Many Feelings,” I learned that to be ambivalent is to have mixed feelings or contradictory ideas about someone or something. In stressful years past, by…

  • Love Song

    Today I offer a post from the Householder’s Archives. It’s a little fiction/poetry I wrote a couple of years ago and thought, in light of my recent musings on faith, vision, and traveling into the unknown, this would be an appropriate transition piece as we prepare for Thanksgiving and Advent. Enjoy.  It begins in the dark,…

  • The Mountain is Detail: The Tension of Faith and Vision

    A friend who spent most of his life in the mountains and now lives in the Piedmont recently said to me, “My only beef with North Carolina is the tree canopy. You can’t look out over things.” He has a point. In New Mexico, you can see everything. The land is BIG. The sky is…

  • Pilgrimage of Heart and Bone

    “One and one-half wandering Jews, free to wander wherever they choose. Are traveling together in the Sangre de Christo, The Blood of Christ Mountains, of New Mexico. On the last leg of a journey they started a long time ago. The arc of a love affair. Rainbows in the high desert air. Mountain passes slipping into stone. Hearts and bones. Hearts…