Good morning... Yesterday's student Sunday at Northside Church was quite special. Kids I have seen grow up over the years played major roles in all three services. Audrey DeShelter shared the pastoral prayer, which felt beautifully reciprocal. Ongoing prayer support is one of the best gifts, given and received, when we are deeply connected to our church family. [...]
Good morning... I met a humble, hopeful prayer. ****** P R AY E R by Grahame Davies Spirit, use me today, not in some miracle that would make others marvel and would make me proud. Not in the word of wisdom that would stay in the mind and make me always remembered. Not in the heroic act that [...]
Good morning... "For today, and all days needed," she texted me this poem. ****** LET YOURSELF REST If you’re exhausted, rest. If you don’t feel like starting a new project, don’t. If you don’t feel the urge to make something new, just rest in the beauty of the old, the familiar, the known. If you don’t feel like [...]
Good morning... Essential things linger from yesterday's post, Key Questions For This New Year. I follow my own encouragement and choose three questions that are whispering for my attention. Can I soften? Can I soften some more? Which comes first, forgiveness or the peace? What's at stake? Hard. Selfish. Controlling. Forcing our own way doesn't get us where [...]
Good morning... I woke with a weird word on my mind. Smattering. When is the last time you heard smattering used in a sentence? Dictionary.com defines the noun smattering in two different ways. a slight, superficial, or introductory knowledge of something. For example, "She knows a smattering of Latin." a small amount or number. Used in a sentence [...]
Good morning... I love hanging up Christmas cards from people we have made memories with over the years. One of my favorites from this season is the smiling faces of the DeShelter family, a close-knit family who has recently endured two rounds of Audrey's risky radioactive cancer treatment at Children's Healthcare of Philadelphia. Thriving through it all, don't [...]
Good morning... On our walk we did several essential things. We exercised in the fresh air. We walked our dogs around the horse farm. We caught up on the details of our challenging family dynamics. We reminded each other that Christmas will be here one short week from Monday. Coming home filled with feelings, I promptly "pigged out" [...]
Good morning... The wordless prayer card above sits beside me in the living room as I write. The man depicted looks so much like my dad reading the paper at the kitchen table in their sunny Ohio villa. "Good Life," the main heading in the newspaper, is something my parents have enjoyed for 85 and 86 years. The [...]
Good morning... "What people stand to discover...is the close relationship between individual heartbreak and the brokenheartedness of the world," notices Barbara Brown Taylor in Learning to Walk in the Dark. "While those who are frightened by the primal energy of dark emotions try to avoid them, becoming more and more cut off from the world at large, those [...]
Good morning... A friend asked me to bring my folders of pre-cut images, my glue sticks and scissors, my blank cards and transparent sleeves. Together we hosted a gathering to make wordless prayer cards at her home with a group of her longtime friends. What joy! The special morning evaporated in such a personal, passionate, powerful way. To [...]
