Author Archives: Eva Petross

I recently discovered this post that I wrote seven years ago as a guest on a friend’s blog. It’s always a bit disorienting to be vibing with something you’re reading before you even recognize it as your own words. Regardless, in this season of thankfulness I’ve been thinking of many of you, my own boatContinue reading “Long Swims”

This Friday is Eid. It’s the big Eid, the one when people commemorate Abraham’s audacious obedience to God by displaying his willingness to sacrifice his son on the mountain of God. So, naturally, there’s sheep everywhere. Bless them. Small flocks gathered under trees in empty lots, standing meekly by while men exchange bills and drinkContinue reading “Sheep, and the First Principle and Foundation”

I’m writing this sitting cross legged on a striped blanket spread across damp brown sand. It’s funny thinking of you reading these words for the first time in Times New Roman on a screen somewhere very far away. But for me, these words are being born onto the lined pages of a weathered notebook alreadyContinue reading “Sunday”

Perhaps is it because I have fallen woefully behind in my working through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius that my friend’s words on Facebook hit me like a punch to the gut yesterday. While I joined in with much of the world celebrating the joy of Easter Sunday this weekend, I dropped right backContinue reading “(not) Normal”

Mary always woke up earlier than I did in Sudan. So many mornings when I filled the kettle with water from the filter by the back door, one of our girls would trot over to her porch in their nightgown, the metal tray of our charcoal stove swinging by her side. Mary, naked baby boyContinue reading “Coals”

A lifetime ago, the wife of our favorite bush pilot gave me some advice I have never forgotten. Her husband’s job kept him away from home sometimes weeks on end (especially when muddy airstrips grounded his plane or sporadic guerrilla wars meant he was on constant standby to get us people out safely). During timesContinue reading “Lemon Tree”

We are now a week into Ramadan. A little less than that into Lent. And already all of me – soul and spirit, joints and marrow – is inflamed with the richness of days marked by prayer, baklava, and sleep deprivation. This is Lentamadan. A holy month of fasting when this quite Christian family inContinue reading “Lentamadan”

One day, from my hotel balcony, I saw men being beaten with whips as they were loaded into the backs of trucks. Two women were among them, dressed in brightly colored tobes, seeming more like guests at a wedding rather than participants in an anti-government protest. Except that they were so calm, so completely inContinue reading “Khartoum, 2021”

For a more nuanced set of immigration reasons than I prefer to explain here, my family has to leave the country where we currently live every four months. Russell and I normally have enough work trips to get the required in and out stamps in our passports to keep us within the bounds of theContinue reading “Montserrat”

Monday morning, I took a quick scan of the sports section of the BBC on my phone while I made my coffee and fed the cat. After I woke up three sleepy girls, I gave them the highlights while they nursed their cereal bowls. Eagles destroyed the Chiefs (yes, that’s the Taylor Swift one). PatrickContinue reading “Manywheres”