Good morning... I didn't expect to cry when it was my turn to share. The four of us have connected over the phone for two hours every month since finishing our spiritual direction training program in August of 2017. We live in different towns, in different states, but at 9:00 am on the third Monday of each month, [...]
Good morning... "The second week of our Gift from the Sea study brings to my mind a poem," she writes. "Slow Me Down, Lord" has graced my home and heart for many years and is a constant source of comfort and peace with the busyness of life." ****** SLOW ME DOWN, LORD (by Wilfred Arlan Peterson) Slow [...]
Good morning... As communities across our globe are gathering together to pray for healing, I want to tell you a story about a growing prayer garden planted in the heart of our small town community. To do so, I pull out my phone and scroll back on a string of texts that began on Wednesday, January 22, 2020. "Hi [...]
Good morning... Sixteen. I saw exactly sixteen of these black caterpillars on one walk last week. Some were crawling. Some were squished. Some littler, some bigger. The sheer number of these creatures in one morning made them impossible for me to ignore. Checking my phone when I arrived home, I was surprised by a text string from a [...]
Good morning... At 7:21 am yesterday, she wrote me in response to our post, I Was So Mad. "I am moved," she said. "This is so strong and authentic, Sue. Thank you for sharing this visceral and vivid depiction of a difficult process. I love the contemporary take on Philippians." Then at 7:23 am she wrote again: "This [...]
Good morning... One of my all time favorite Scripture passages is John 6:43-46 in The Message translation. Jesus said, “Don’t bicker among yourselves over me. You’re not in charge here. The Father who sent me is in charge. He draws people to me—that’s the only way you’ll ever come. Only then do I do my work, putting people together, [...]
Good morning... "While the Fourth of July, 1776, is the day America declared independence from Great Britain, people of color were not able to celebrate that same freedom," explains a letter I recently received from my spiritual direction training program. "On July 4th, 1852, here is what Frederick Douglass said in his speech The Meaning of July Fourth [...]
Good morning... Her email was short and direct. "Sue, what is happening around us? What do we do? Is God listening? Afraid for our world." My response was long and drawn out. "Great questions. I am learning not to just slough off important opportunities to communicate. You are asking so I will answer and these are my prayerful responses." [...]
Good morning... The hands of the hand-painted clock above fell off long ago. This broken clock hangs on the wall in my spiritual direction space, an invitation for me to stay keenly alert for God's perfect timing, kairos versus chronos time. Chronos, clock-time, is the measurable sequence of seconds, minutes, and hours structuring our daily lives. Yet it [...]
Good morning... "I think we are all living in what Rohr calls liminal time," she said to me at a backyard reception following the funeral. Intuitively I agreed, then I thought to myself, "I need to look up the definition of that word again." Liminal. Wikipedia shares this drawing and this detailed description: "In [...]
