Good morning... After I asked a clarifying question, she said I was being rude. "Rude" was not my intention, but her strong reaction gave me pause. She felt judged by my inquiry. Thinking about it later, I felt convicted. I had brought up her past mistake and opened an old wound. To her that felt like judgement. I [...]
Good morning... Each month we talk by phone for an hour - me in Atlanta, Georgia, she in Denver, Colorado. Our voices span the distance on all the important levels. Recently I read aloud to her a poem which reminds me of our God-given connection. ****** From Six Hours Away by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer From six hours away, [...]
Good morning... This Mother's Day weekend, I realize that in 112 days I will be a mother-in-law. I am excited to let down my hair and be openly receptive to all the intimate ways I will be touched by our new daughter, Chandler. Chandler works for Earl Grey Floral in Austin, Texas and has been asked by her [...]
Good morning... Because all the green leaves have been nibbled from our ivy, now our ten borrowed sheep pull up and eat the thick brown vines in our back yard. It's been fascinating to watch these creatures eat, eat, and eat some more, eighteen hours a day they say. The sheep have learned to come to my gentle [...]
Good morning... There is enough chaotic doom and gloom to fill every ounce of every day, but my attention is not drawn there. My focus deepens from the surface of things to form a quiet prayer, "LORD, what is my work to do in this wounding world?" A poem by Mary Oliver, read aloud to me by a [...]
Good morning... “My custom has always been to ponder grief; that is, to follow it through ventricle and aorta to find out its lurking places," writes Marilynne Robinson in the novel Gilead. "That old weight in the chest, telling me there is something I must dwell on, because I know more than I know and must learn it [...]
Good morning... I spent the weekend processing our class trip to Montgomery, Alabama to visit the Legacy Museum and the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, beautiful facilities offering experiential opportunities to teach the story of slavery, lynching, racial injustice in our country. I thought, "These memorials remind me of Yad Vashem, The World Holocaust Remembrance Center." We [...]
Good morning... Four thousand neighbors and me, we still have no internet. So, once again, no blogging in the middle of the night. Still stirred awake in the wee hours, I was drawn to another form of creativity. Accessing the healing power of pansies! Yesterday, I had cut some pansies from our neighborhood's dying patch before they are [...]
Good morning... Four thousand neighbors struggle with me through an internet outage. We have been without service for about thirty-six hours, thus no blog post this morning. No internet also means no TV, no email, none of the normal communications I usually take for granted. An insight sparks as I sit at Starbucks at 8:30 pm, writing. Our [...]
Good morning... She texted me the photo above after enjoying yesterday's post, Power Drained Out Of Me. Having gone with her church to the Holy Land the day after our group returned from our trip in March, she wondered, "Did you guys go to this church (please don't ask me where) in Israel with this painting of the [...]
