Good morning... A friend sent me beautiful words shared by her church on Sunday. Instead of the traditional "Passing the Peace" portion of worship, during this season of social distancing her church family is developing a new habit called "Passing Our Prayers." ****** Today's prayer comes from Elizabeth Shows Caffey: Now I say to you in conclusion, life [...]
Good morning... Following yesterday's post, Spread Calm With A Palm, many of you sent me pictures of God's green growth on your front door. One of you said, "Instead of the red blood of an unblemished lamb on that first Passover night, maybe these green branches on our doors symbolize our prayers for the virus to pass over our [...]
Good morning... "Nature is not a place to visit. It is home," says Gary Snyder in The Practice of the Wild. This quiet quote appears today on the cool dog calendar a friend gave me for my birthday. As we in the state of Georgia receive the new detailed directive to "shelter in place," this is the perfect morning [...]
Good morning... This Sabbath morn, may we all enter in to the prayer our pastor shared with our church family this week. ****** "In the Life of the Church"- the Pandemic Prayer from Catholic Theological Union May we who are merely inconvenienced Remember those whose lives are at stake. May we who have no risk factors Remember those who [...]
Good morning... "God, my shepherd!" says Psalm 23:1-4 in the Message translation. "I don’t need a thing. You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from. True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction. Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side." [...]
Good morning... To end our Zoom gathering, he gently read to us a poem, a poem I had never met. ****** The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may [...]
Good morning... Grateful to turn fifty-seven today, I am experiencing my most extreme birthday ever. The word "extreme" is a multifaceted one. As an adjective, "extreme" means very far removed from the ordinary or an outermost point farthest from the norm. As a noun, "extreme" means the highest degree, like "cautious to an extreme," or two things as different from each [...]
Good morning... "Where's dad?" our twenty-one year old daughter asked. "He's on the back porch drinking bourbon with his brother." The sentence sounded super silly as it rolled right off my tongue, since Steve's only brother lives in Omaha, Nebraska umpteen miles away from our corner of the globe in Atlanta, Georgia. A new habit has formed in [...]
Good morning... Surprisingly, one of my supervisor's survey questions pierced a sensitive nerve, sort of like when the dentist finds a cavity and pain shoots everywhere. "When it comes to workload at Northside, how heavy is the burden or light is the load?" That was the question striking my nesting nerve. We were asked to respond on a scale [...]
Good morning... I remember a poem read at the funeral of a dear friend who died of cancer. I search for it, I find it, and I adapt it to meet the deep need spreading across our globe today. ****** An adaptation of "What Cancer Cannot Do" by Dr. Robert L. Lynn Coronavirus is so limited... It cannot [...]
