Good morning... At my recent talk at a local church, I talked about prayer being a form of rumination. Rumination is what cows do. They chew on food, burp it back up, then chew on it more to extract maximum nutritional benefit. When we pray, we chew on feelings and thoughts, burp them back up, then chew on them [...]

Good morning... Today I will have lunch with someone I have loved for nearly ten years, a someone I have never laid my own eyes upon. I have admired this person from afar for her courage, for her dedication to God, for her commitment to holistic health and genuine authenticity. I have chewed on her words, and the words [...]

Good morning... How does God do it? How does God whisper in surround sound? At 2:30 in the morning, how does God spark me to write yesterday's post, "The art of holy listening," then wake me again at 6:00 am to read these companion, online words from Henri Nouwen's 1.14.16 daily meditation? Nouwen says profoundly: "Our minds are always [...]

Good morning... Tonight I will speak to a down-to-earth group of women, women who do so much for so many in our local community. Last year, this group gracefully hosted a large gathering to experience the wisdom of a newly published author. She spoke of finding a passion and following it. She spoke of her personal path toward publication [...]

Good morning... In the bleak mid winter, we crave spring. Pondering the work, I recognize that "spring" has four distinct definitions. Spring is a noun, a source of fresh water running endlessly beneath the earth's surface. Spring is a different noun, an annual season in which new life bursts forth across life's landscape. Spring is another noun, a resilient [...]

Good morning... Fascinated, I read these words aloud to my class: "People may call what happens at midlife "a crisis," but it's not. It's an unraveling - a time when you feel a desperate pull to live the life you want to live, not the one you're "supposed" to live. The unraveling is a time when you are challenged [...]

Good morning... With a quarter of a century under my belt, I experienced my own cacophony in 1988. Remember? Cacophony means a mishmash of loud conflicting sounds, a racket, an uproar (see 1.7.16 post "Our un-lived parts."). I was a twenty-five year old newlywed, an inexperienced therapist living in Connecticut a long, long way from my childhood comfort in [...]

Good morning... Walking with a friend before church yesterday, we touched on a truth Richard Rohr shared in his 1.10.16 online devotional. So instantly she forwarded his words from her phone to my email. After our walk, these words reached from my computer into my soul. Rohr writes: "In fact, God is in us, and in everything else that [...]

Good morning... God makes all kinds of people. There were several varieties at my son's middle school wrestling match in McDonough, Georgia yesterday. There were long haired and no haired and facial haired of all kinds. There were adorable three year old girls climbing the bleachers, the laps of loved ones, and the proverbial walls over time. There were [...]

Good morning... The dead looking amaryllis bulb I planted in my pot before Thanksgiving has grown two two-foot stems, each with four six-inch flowers. Over the last ten weeks, it has been fascinating to watch the bulb gradually sprout, grow, and bloom. Yesterday, my amaryllis plant toppled over, top-heavy. It felt so symbolically perfect for the day I was [...]