"Morning my friends!" A dear friend texted two of us yesterday morning. "Thank you for the loving, supportive, tenacious way you embody this paradox - wise words from the amazing Suleika Jaouad!" Living means learning to hold the astonishingly beautiful and unbearably hard things in the same palm. In the process of living, we experience the powerful paradox [...]
Good morning... During our therapeutic community group at PAWkids this week, we learned about letting go. "What does letting go actually look like?" our hand-out asked. What catches your eye as you review the sheet now? Here's what we learned about the art of letting go. You accept that some things [...]
Good morning... The faith of our children takes form in many shapes and sizes, with varying shades and angles. I was reminded of this truth during yesterday's 11:15 am worship service at Northside Church. There was the Children's Handbell Choir, the young Cherub Choir, and the older Chancel Choir with each unique youngster making a joyful noise to [...]
Good morning... Yesterday, I enjoyed the privilege of attending the Kitchen Cura graduation at the Ignatius House Retreat Center. Kitchen Cura is a six month culinary internship program which empowers individuals recovering from addiction and homelessness by teaching scratch-cooking, developing knife skills, and mastering the ability to host nutritious meals in hopes of building hospitality careers. The participants [...]
Good morning... From page 16 of Waking Up to This Day by Paula D'Arcy, we savored this sentence together. "Catherine of Siena writes, 'My deepest me is God.'" (Pause. Now. Really think about that. "My deepest me is God.") Then we moved to the next page and read aloud a powerful paragraph. "It's as if each of us [...]
Good morning... Still. Quiet. Pampered. As the recovering women awake this morning on their spiritual retreat at Ignatius House, I am asking God to meet them in profound, new ways. Each time we can truly "be still" and know on a deeper level that God is God (and we are not), we uncover fresh facets of our genuine [...]
Good morning... Eugene Peterson spent zillions of hours translating the entire Bible into a relatable language for us common people. The Message translation is an inviting gift to our world, a gift birthed by Peterson's long obedience in the same direction. Leif Peterson eulogizing his late father, Eugene, at the First Presbyterian Church in Kalispell, Montana on November [...]
Good morning... Yesterday we gathered for our first Wednesday afternoon class of the semester to study Waking Up to This Day: Seeing the Beauty Right before Us by Paula D'Arcy. New faces joined our crowd of old friends, and the Holy Spirit bonded us naturally. To introduce ourselves, we shared one thing we noticed about the cover of [...]
Good morning... As the moon thickens above our home, I think back on our sacred weekend at the Ignatius House Retreat Center. Abiding in the quietness of now, I pull out my hand-scribbled notes. I return to the first quote shared on Friday night, the first teaching, the first song. "I remind myself that we are never promised [...]
Good morning... Several people wrote to me after yesterday's blog post, a post highlighting the ever-widening Circle of Love sparked by the life of Christian mystic Betty Skinner. Many of you wondered, "Is there a required registration for Dr. Cathy Snapp's talk?" (See flyer above.) I wondered that myself, so I reached out to the organizers and learned [...]
