Good morning... As we conspire, breathe together with God, our inside self and our outside self grow to become best friends. Connected. Congruent. In constant conversation with our Creator. No longer needed, our icy false self melts into God's warmth, watering the ground of our true "birthright" self. Connected. Congruent. In constant communication with our Creator. Who we are becoming [...]
Good morning... This hurting world needs Our Special Endowment, the unique spiritual gift God has placed within each of us. Tucked inside the bulletin from our Women's Lenten Communion Service, we meet deep questions to help us discern: “GOD, WHAT AM I MADE FOR?” Focusing on these eight questions as we journey through the forty days of Lent, we [...]
Good morning... By 12:34 am I was stirred awake from sleep by a panicky dream. So I got up from bed, scratched notes in my journal, then went back to bed to sleep through the night. Now I wake for the day at 6:43 am and I try to read the words chicken-scratched in last night's dark: "Fingerprint - carbon [...]
Good morning... "We are like plants full of tropisms..." writes Parker Palmer on page 6 of Let Your Life Speak. My mind wonders, "What does tropism mean?" So I google the word and learn some fun facts. The noun tropism grows from the root word "to turn." Tropisms are the turning or bending movements of a living organism toward [...]
Good morning... Today, I could write about football, yesterday's rainy day off school, or our daughter's safe return from Australia with her tattered, three-wheeled suitcase. This morning, I could write about our finicky coffee pot, this week's beginning of our new class semester, or the strengthening pull of God's call upon my life. Right now, I could write about [...]
Good morning... "I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about - quite apart from what I would like it to be about - or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions," writes Parker Palmer, author of the book we will be digesting and [...]
Good morning... He shared one simple quote after yesterday's post, Primary Or Peripheral? “The first wise men gave Christ treasures from their kingdoms. Today’s wise men give Christ the treasures of their heart.” - Holley Gerth Yet, complicating the gift-giving process, our heart-treasures are wrapped in our human nature. Anger and anxiety. Stress and selfishness. Depression and defensiveness. These [...]
Good morning... "...the people who plant seeds of a movement make a critical decision: they decide to live 'divided no more,'" observes Parker Palmer in Let Your Life Speak, the book I will be teaching on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays next semester. "They decide no longer to act on the outside in a way that contradicts some truth about [...]
Good morning... "In all of creation, identity is a challenge only for humans," writes David Benner in The Gift of Being Yourself. "A tulip knows exactly what it is. It is never tempted by false ways of being. Nor does it face complicated decisions in the process of becoming. So it is with dogs, rocks, trees, stars, amoebas, electrons [...]
Good Morning... A generous friend gave me tickets to see the musical version of The Color Purple at the Fox Theatre. For years and years, the main character, Celie, languished under the silencing power of incest, emotional and physical abuse, and the debilitating pain of being labeled "ugly." Reaching her breaking point in the second half of the play, [...]
