Good morning... This is the question grabbing my attention from yesterday's post Eight Questions To Ponder: "How have I been shaped by the strongest hate and the strongest love?" Asked by the speaker to quickly jot our first response to each of the eight questions, my answer to this question tumbled onto two lists. Strongest hate: Names of my [...]
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... Somewhere at some point within this past week, I ran across this quote hanging on someone's wall: "Our deepest roots are not touched by the frost." Our deepest roots have been growing since God first brought us to mind, and disaster and depression and even death deepen us down to our sturdiest roots. Jesus whispers, "I have [...]
Good morning... A woman who sits with me in spiritual direction, for one hour each month, offered simple, straightforward encouragement: "I feel you have this gift. Wanted to share." Intrigued, I read Bob Dannals' devotional from 2.1.18. ****** Some interpreters are always trying to figure out what really happened in the Bible's healing stories, as if they in some [...]
Good morning... In our final Listening Group of the semester, I intended to unwrap Chapter 3, but by "mistake" I read aloud excerpts from Chapter 4, a chapter entitled "God's Compassion for the Rebellious." I shared aloud these introductory words before we slowly read, reread, and reflected on the parable of the prodigal son found in Luke 15:11-24. "You [...]
Good morning... "Mondays have become magical for me," writes my friend on her October 24th music blog. "I know, I know," she continues, "most people dread them and wish them away, but for now, my Mondays hit a lovely sweet spot. Today, the day began with a torrential rain storm, coffee on the porch, and a quick catch up of [...]
Good morning... "...the people who plant seeds of a movement make a critical decision: they decide to live 'divided no more,'" observes Parker Palmer in Let Your Life Speak, the book I will be teaching on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays next semester. "They decide no longer to act on the outside in a way that contradicts some truth about [...]
Good morning... "God is the constant I AM and we are frail, fickle human beings. So we do not always speak the same language," I continued to wrestle in my journal on June 10, 2004. God said to Moses: "I am the eternal God...whose name is “I AM"... The footnote for this passage, Exodus 3:14 (CEV), reads: “I AM” may mean “I am [...]
Good morning... On my back porch, I ate my lunch in the post-storm sunshine. A butterfly flew around the corner of our home and rested on the table right beside me. Watching me as I watched her, she inched closer and fanned her black wings, spotted with shimmering turquoise and gold. I was amazed as this bold, brave creature [...]
Good morning... Words I wrote last winter, pre-programmed again in May, and re-posted again this summer, minister to me now. "The definition of holiness–in a nutshell–means being set apart to purity, to be like God,” says blogger Shana Schutte. “And the result of holiness, of God transforming us to make us more like Him, is outrageous joy, amazing peace, [...]
