Good morning... Yesterday I facilitated our final weekly class of the season. This semester has been a doozie. Our discussions have embraced real life, ups and downs, hopes and hurts, whys and why nots. Planning weddings, funerals, and impending graduations. Facing challenging family issues and life-changing divorce. Mourning the death of pets and parents, friends and family members, [...]
Good morning... "Did you read Sue's devotional? I thought it was unfortunate that she chose an unflattering story about Bryant Skinner after his death," read one text that came into my phone after yesterday's post. Oh no. I felt dread. Self-doubt. Embarrassment. What had I written that could be seen as unflattering? Had my prayed-over words been a [...]
Good morning... I felt privileged to serve holy communion to our family of faith during a tumultuous time in the United Methodist Church. With my feeble fingers I pulled off a small piece of the whole homemade loaf and placed it in the open palm of each person walking up to receive a living morsel of transformational truth. [...]
Good morning... "The Inner Meaning of Jesus' Parables," reads the subtitle of a Christian classic published in 1970 by John A. Sanford, who was an American Jungian analyst and Episcopal priest. I am an "inner meaning" girl. I love Jesus. I find his parables fascinatingly fun to ponder, so I am intrigued by Sanford's work exploring "the inner [...]
Good morning... I am drawn back between the covers of an inspiring book I taught in our living room a few years back. ****** Excerpt from Brene Brown's The Gifts Of Imperfection People call what happens at midlife "a crisis," but it's not. It's an unraveling - a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the [...]
Good morning... Driving around Atlanta each and every February, my spirit cringes at the sight of crape myrtles cut back, harshly pruned, large limbs severed to their trunk. Pricked by their visual barrenness, I remember the long, hard season when the life of my dreams was severed, pruned, cut back to my very Core. Every year at this [...]
Good morning... I enjoy the mornings when God lets me sleep past 5:00 am. That is the time Henri Nouwen Society sends out their Daily Meditation. Sometimes I open the post and wallow in the wisdom. Sometimes I do not. Today I did and here is what I read. ****** Loneliness by Henri Nouwen, February 6, 2019 It [...]
Good morning... Our family is short. You saw photos of my parents in a few recent posts, my parents who stand 5-feet-1 and 5-feet-3. My older sister and I stand up really tall to reach 5-feet ourselves, and our younger brother is the giant of our family at a whopping 5-feet-9. My husband is also 5-feet-9, and our [...]
Good morning... Two Fridays ago loved ones packed the place, celebrating the life of a young man who died on his nineteenth birthday. Friends and family members shared stories, tearful and touching, funny and full-of-life. One of the minsters urged us to trust this truth: "Nothing is lost that love remembers." The other minister, my husband, told the [...]
Good morning... Re-editing our post from a few days ago, I stick in a strange new word that somehow feels right. Viscerally. I am drawn to add viscerally (touch "Previous. Previous." above to revisit this message). The sentence now reads: "My gut viscerally felt like the knotted debris still littering the roads after Hurricane Michael." I google this foreign-to-me [...]
