Good morning... This spring, I told you earlier I Feel Pregnant With Quadruplets, holding, nurturing, expanding opportunities conceived by God's Spirit. Three weeks ago, our Northside Writers' Group birthed the Women's Lenten Communion Service; a special, sacred evening was enjoyed by all. Two weeks ago, we birthed a second, powerful With God Weather Life Retreat in Ellijay, Georgia; the ripples set [...]
Good morning... After sharing a quote in yesterday's post from Jan Johnson's When The Soul Listens, I quietly rest in the rest of the nurturing chapter. I eat from the feast prepared on pages 170 and 171. ****** The rhythm of action and contemplation makes compassion fatigue and burnout unnecessary. Your conversational life with God will keep you richly [...]
Good morning... Nibbling on nuts and sipping a glass of wine, I enjoyed the new-book-signing for a man I admire. If God had a human voice, it would be Ron Greer's. Strong. Steady. Soothing. If anyone lives like Christ most moments of most days, it is Ron Greer. Real. Reliable. Relentlessly relational. If anyone needs a referral for pastoral [...]
Good morning... This hurting world needs Our Special Endowment, the unique spiritual gift God has placed within each of us. Tucked inside the bulletin from our Women's Lenten Communion Service, we meet deep questions to help us discern: “GOD, WHAT AM I MADE FOR?” Focusing on these eight questions as we journey through the forty days of Lent, we [...]
Good morning... I slept well in the afterglow of the Women's Lenten Communion Service. Now quietly I sit and savor the Scriptures saturating last night's trip-fold bulletin. Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, [that special endowment] which was intentionally bestowed on you [by the Holy Spirit]... Practice and work hard on these things; be absorbed in them [completely [...]
Good morning... In my recent post Fill The Hole In My Soul, I shared words handwritten by my 25-year-old self in my first official journal back in 1988. Afterward a supportive subscriber wrote: "Wow. You are the same as when you were at 25. Older. Wiser. But really the same. If you had cut and pasted that message from your [...]
Good morning... By 12:34 am I was stirred awake from sleep by a panicky dream. So I got up from bed, scratched notes in my journal, then went back to bed to sleep through the night. Now I wake for the day at 6:43 am and I try to read the words chicken-scratched in last night's dark: "Fingerprint - carbon [...]
Good morning... "I remember feeling pregnant with twins," she wrote me after yesterday's post, I Feel Pregnant With Quadruplets. "My husband would ask how I felt each day and my answer was always, "Heavy, I feel heavy." Not "I feel fat," but "I feel heavy." Heavy from the physical load on my body and heavy from the emotional load [...]
Good morning... "I must listen to my life and try to understand what it is truly about - quite apart from what I would like it to be about - or my life will never represent anything real in the world, no matter how earnest my intentions," writes Parker Palmer, author of the book we will be digesting and [...]
Good morning... I love, love, love my black, well-worn Frye boots. Yesterday was the first day I donned those precious puppies as autumn tips toward winter. When I pulled my boots over my socks, I thought of a phrase that appears in one of my favorite verses in the Message translation of holy scripture. A green Shoot will sprout [...]
