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 [...]
Good morning... Before we began our time together, she read aloud to us this poem. ****** The Guest House by Jalaluddin Rumi This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes As an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they're a crowd [...]
Good morning... I like to buy $3.00 bunches of outdated flowers from Kroger. Continuing to allow last week's roses to gently unfold, I am keeping them on as they age quietly, at their own pace. With the dying process, the fragrance changes. The soft texture dries and browns. The layers droop down into a new form of beauty. [...]
Good morning... Our Friday class began by giving updates on our prayer concerns. The basement space in our home, where we gather for class, has lovingly been called "a womb with a view," as we circle up in the presence of God, week after week, important things gestate in the hiddenness of our soul. Then last night I [...]
Good morning... The rains held off, and we walked in wonderful weather, mild and inviting. Along our way, we ran into two 'soul friends' also walking and talking at the horse farm. One is supporting her husband through treatment for his pancreatic cancer and the other is blossoming beautifully on the other side of a divorce and remarriage [...]
