On Han’s Day, we went looking for something profound from our ten-year-old spiritual animator. He wanted bean and cheese quesadillas. In the Cloud of Unknowing, we are learning to stop inhabiting painful places and frightening futures, to receive what is given without grasping for certainty—and to let a ten-year-old simply be ten.
Tag Archives: Functional Multiplicity
Nine Lives Here
Solis’s Day, a seven-year-old’s question—What are we supposed to be doing?—becomes a question about work, authority, safety, uncertainty and belonging. An almanac entry from a plural family learning that there are nine lives here, and practicing how to live like there are.
Dad’s Here
Solis looked up from the phone and, for a moment, the physical world became overwhelmingly concrete. We call it a terror peek. On a day when we asked a therapist for help, it brought us back to one of the most important questions in our family: Where is the adult? Dad’s here.
Nothing Was Wasted
Yesterday, Dad was afraid he might not know how to provide for his children. Today, we are discovering that provision, vocation, healing, and family may look different than we thought—and that when a life changes completely, nothing good has to be wasted.
Loving Refuses the Fight
When a loved one’s anger begins to feel like prophecy, Dad has to remember who he is—and who his sons are.
This is a story about losing a job, refusing erasure, loving without surrender, and choosing one little thing at a time.
Because we cannot survive without all of us.
There You Are
A four-year-old’s dream about waiting to be born leads us into a morning of Face-to-Face, wolf-pup smiles, missing ears, John Lennon, turning wheels, and the practice of attunement: seeing, listening, returning, and delighting in finding one another.
Watching the Wheels
What happens when the tools meant to make life more accessible begin demanding more of the life they are supposed to serve? From an iPhone Shortcut to a Heidelberg press, a 700-foot Ferris wheel, songs remembered from childhood, and an afternoon spent holding our sons, we found ourselves asking a different question: What is the work of our life—and what happens when we stop chasing the wheels and simply take care of our children?
Nothing Is Counting on This
What does functional multiplicity look like when nobody is asking us to perform? On Han’s Day, a frightening morning gives way to Braided Bridge, where a two-foot wheel on a Heidelberg press turns quietly beneath the memory of a 700-foot Ferris wheel we once hoped could help solve the housing crisis. Maybe the best things—the true things—really do start small.
You May Think You See a Person Losing Their Mind
A jagged Wednesday becomes a portrait of how a plural family holds itself together. Plans fail, the bedroom becomes unusable, memories and outside messages unsettle the day, and the family keeps adapting—through listening, boundaries, prayer, Greek salad, quesadillas, Hilda, making the bed, and one brother reminding Daddy: “I think you should be with Luke.” Along the way, an ordinary question about whether nine people sharing one physical body have quesadillas in their stomach or their stomachs opens onto something larger: anatomy, family, and the interior ways we know one another.
Understanding September 1
What happens when nobody is THE ONE? A classical analysis of Solis’s Day reveals an answer emerging through ordinary life: Daniel wakes Daddy, Jude imagines dinner, Hope changes the plan, Solis draws an ethical boundary, and the family adapts when a difficult afternoon makes rest impossible. September 1 becomes a study in functional multiplicity, consequential listening, and a new understanding of stability: when something happens, the family remains.
