Good morning... I have heard the expression: "Hurting people hurt." This week I was introduced to the flip side: "Healing people heal." Pondering this phrase in the wee hours of the night, I open an email from Jan Johnson, a California professor from my spiritual direction training program. For me, Jan puts flesh on the bones of these [...]
Good morning... "Sue, I’m sorry so much tragedy has visited you, your family, and so many other people you love," a subscriber wrote yesterday. "Your post today brought to mind the Pieta, the amazing sculpture by Michelangelo in St. Peter’s Basilica. I’ve seen it three times, and on each occasion the rendering of Mary holding Jesus’s body caused [...]
Good morning... After re-working yesterday's post, I touch on the Henri Nouwen online devotional, and God's Spirit flows me further down the exact same wavelength. It is as if Nouwen is continuing the final sentence of our morning message, a sentence which reads: "If we prayerfully listen well to the inklings of God’s Spirit stirring in our soul, [...]
Good morning... This sacred Saturday, we are called to remember, piecing together, mentally re-membering the painstaking process that crucified our Lord. Here is a song to help you remember, piecing together, re-membering in your mind God's ultimate gift of sacrificial love. Let's take ourselves back with a touching rendition of Were you there? Late in the afternoon a wealthy man [...]
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 [...]
