Good morning... One late afternoon several years ago, as I finished hosting class in our living room, my mind wandered weirdly to a friend in California. My close high school friend had moved from our suburb of Cleveland, Ohio to a suburb of Los Angeles to pursue his acting passion, he had not married or had kids, and [...]
Good morning... After re-working yesterday's post, I touch on the Henri Nouwen online devotional, and God's Spirit flows me further down the exact same wavelength. It is as if Nouwen is continuing the final sentence of our morning message, a sentence which reads: "If we prayerfully listen well to the inklings of God’s Spirit stirring in our soul, [...]
Good morning... "Sue, how do we make sense of the senseless?" she emailed after yesterday's post, How Can Students Shoot Students? "We thank you for trying." "Yesterday, I felt compelled to call my sister, who lives in Highlands Ranch, Colorado," her email continued. "As we are were catching up on unimportant details of each others lives, one by [...]
Good morning... Waiting for my son's Eagle Scout booklet to be bound at Fed Ex, I browsed the tall circular card rack. Whoever comes up with these hilarious expressions of common emotion gets a gold star in my gratitude book. I fell so in love with one birthday card that I bought two copies, one for my 82-year-old [...]
Good morning... We are broken. All of us. In one way or another. Jewish and Christian. Shooters and survivors. Homeless and mansion-dwellers. In the midst of this one-of-a-kind week, I forget how God led me to this poem written by Lauretta P. Burns in 1957. LET GO AND LET GOD! As children bring their broken toys with tears for us [...]
Good morning... "Very well said, Sue," he wrote after yesterday's post, a post highlighting the loving response of a rabbi following a shooting in his California synagogue. "Incidents of pure evil like the one in Poway and the suicide bombings at the Christian churches in Sri Lanka during Easter services that killed more than 200 persons celebrating the [...]
Good morning... As the plastic, pastel eggs are tucked away for next year and the last chocolate Easter bunnies are now at ninety percent off, I am brought back to the spring wisdom of When The Heart Waits. "There is a line from a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins that speaks to me: 'Let him easter in us, be [...]
Good morning... Seems yesterday's post, My "Crazy" Popped Out, pierced a nerve. Just listen to the emails gushing the blood of our human nature. "Your message is one I need to hear over and over again as I go through different seasons with my husband, our boys, our daughters-in-law, and our grandkids. It's a constant struggle to refrain [...]
Good morning... In yesterday's post I was grateful to sense the fruits of God's Spirit growing early on my Easter Sunday branch, as I heeded Betty Skinner's wisdom: "The big 'I' must die." Twenty-four hours later, I realized my big "I" had not died, instead my big "I" was crouching inside, keeping score. Let me explain. Two minutes [...]
Good morning... I noticed Easter power rising in me twelve hours early. Let me explain just what I mean. At noon on Saturday, I sat on our couch folding load after load of warm, clean laundry. I had enjoyed a conversation with each of our two college-aged daughters home for the holiday weekend and our seventeen-year-old son who [...]
