Good morning… One of my unraveling seasons happened in my mid-twenties. To give voice to my emerging self, I worked on a poem, month after month, a poem that described my inner wrestling match. In 2004, in the midst of another unraveling season following a life-altering move, I resurrected my authentic poem and self-published my first book, Scribbling a [...]

Good morning… I googled the question popping into my mind: "What does the Cat in the Hat try to balance?" These familiar Dr. Suess words, captured in the children's book The Cat in the Hat, both tickle me and challenge me at the very same time. They are absurdly ridiculous and, sometime, so am I. "'Now! now! have no [...]

Good morning... When the pressures of life begin to poke holes in our wall of togetherness, from outside in and from inside out, we become like that hard working little dutch boy trying to stick our fingers and our toes in the crumbling dike to hold back the powerful waters seeking to sweep us into authenticity. Eventually, we can [...]

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 [...]