Good morning... As the passage of time naturally expands, we end one month before the next begins. Today is May. Tomorrow will be June. Like being caught in the invisible power of gravity, we can't escape the ticking away of time. Spring naturally tips into summer, that's just life's way. We can't go back. We can't stay here. [...]
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... "And here is the miracle —" writes poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, "to find in grief not only sorrow but a ravenous gratefulness for life, to find in loss not only emptiness but an unimaginable abundance. It doesn’t happen in a day, no, not even in a year, but who said miracles need be instantaneous." Words from [...]
Good morning... Reflecting on this fall, do you remember the 15 Bags Of Abundant Love we created for the overnight retreat at Ignatius House hosted for women recovering from homelessness and addiction? So many of us contributed special items to fill the bags with symbols of God's extravagant love. [...]
Good morning... Along life's way, many women lose at least one child to miscarriage or to a full term still birth. I myself had four miscarriages before giving birth to our four great kids. This is a quiet grief with empty arms, a grief which reshapes our soul. "It is good for me to stop and feel the [...]
Good morning... I love this Halloween photo of our nephew and his expectant wife. On the morning after Thanksgiving, many of us wake stuffed. "Today's average American lives more comfortably than the nineteenth century's wealthiest tycoons, who never beheld the sky from an airplane seat, browsed a website, heated soup in a microwave, or looked at a color [...]
Good morning... "The whole person is involved when we give thanks from our hearts," says Br. David Steindl-Rast. As I wake early this Thanksgiving morn, my heart is saturated with gratitude. I am grateful for small, simple pleasures - a furry blanket and cozy socks that hug my feet just right. I am grateful for my husband and [...]
Good morning... Our Friday group finished the fall semester last week, yet we have remained connected through a lively email string. Regularly we share words of encouragement as we pray for Elizabeth, the 37-year-old daughter-in-law of our classmate, who began her first round of chemo on Monday for advanced colon cancer. "I want to tell you all how [...]
Good morning... As I wake in gratitude for these early morning hours, I envision myself quietly living my favorite Mother Teresa quote: "I am a little pencil in the hand of writing God who is sending a love letter to the world." As I invest two or three hours prayerfully pondering, writing, and editing words during the wee [...]
