Good morning... This challenging week, all of the waning light has drained out of the moon. With 0% illumination, the sky will experience a new moon tonight. Then the small sliver of a waxing crescent moon will slowly start to shed light again, like a sense of quiet hope rising from within. My dear friend has had a [...]
Good morning... God's timing is interesting. During this tremendously difficult week, "Dark Emotions" is the name of the chapter we are discussing in Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor. Dark emotions. Fear. Despair. Sadness. We don't like them. In their presence, our natural tendency is to run and hide. Avoid. Deny. Yet Barbara encourages [...]
Good morning... Some darkness is so very dark, we are rendered speechless. A friend in our Friday group shared this Thomas Merton quote before terrorists slaughtered innocents in Israel. When I am liberated by silence, when I am no longer involved in the measurement of life, but in the living of it, I can discover a form of [...]
Good morning... "It's late August," Barbara Brown Taylor begins her first chapter in Learning to Walk in the Dark. "I am lying in my yard on a blow-up mattress waiting for Friday to become Friday night, which is how I know people are wrong when they say, 'It's as clear as the difference between night and day.' That [...]
Good morning... Waking in the middle of the night, I am surprised by the brilliant light resting on our couch. I snap the photo above then walk around to find more creative light streaking our floor and rug. As if on a scavenger hunt, I follow the glow onto the back porch. Voila, I discover the source. A [...]
Good morning... After our Friday morning discussion of Learning to Walk in the Dark by Barbara Brown Taylor, I looked down and saw the strange sight above. A cut out, curled up magazine page caught randomly in the corner of our patio where the fourteen of us had just finished class. From where did this image blow in? [...]
Good morning... If all goes as planned, James LeBow will experience a successful heart transplant today at Vanderbilt Heart Center in Nashville, Tennessee. For many years, his wife Brooke has been a beloved member of our women's studies at Northside Church. Mission Circle gatherings and Sunday afternoon study each month. Wednesday morning and Friday morning studies each week. [...]
Good morning... Yesterday a faraway friend suggested I explore a poem entitled "I Am There." So I googled the creative expression and found this fascinating gift. ****** "I Am There" by James Dillet Freeman Do you need Me? I am there. You cannot see Me, yet I am the light you see by. You cannot hear Me, yet [...]
Good morning... On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, suicide hijackers seized U.S. passenger jets and crashed them into two New York skyscrapers, tragically killing nearly three thousand innocent people on one ordinary day. On this Monday, September 11th, 2023 we honor the memory of those loved ones lost on the twenty-second anniversary of the attack, which remains [...]
Good morning... I happened upon a gorgeous reading just posted by one of my favorite poets. In processing her own grief after her son Finn's death, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer has become for many of us like the sweet sun rising in the dark of night. The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back [...]
