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, [...]
Good morning... I sensed God concluding yesterday's message with this deep desire: "Connected to our Creator, I want me, the real me, and you, the real you, to mature into the unique people God is coaxing us to be." This concept had expanded from an vivid picture of the lasting mother/child bond painted on Mother's Day morn to a [...]
Good morning... The joy and pain of being a writer is an incessant obsession with choosing the perfect word. It is hard for my mind to rest when my soul continues to wonder, "What changes might make my final tweet truer, better, more impactful?" So it did not surprise me that after yesterday's post, I spent some time pondering, [...]
Good morning... We self-published our first book in 2004, my artist friend and me. Our book, Scribbling a Masterpiece: Doodle to Your Destiny, took a poem I had written when I was in my twenties and married it with her colorfully creative drawings, drawings which captured the essence of God's truth. On the back of our book, we shared [...]
Good morning... I had heard the phrase before, but I chuckled when she said it in a casual conversation. "Don't 'should' on yourself." I "should" do this. I "should" not do that. I "should" say this. I "should" not say that. I "should" think this. I "should' not think that. We "should" on ourselves all the time. Other people [...]
