Making Room For Zoom
Good morning... This virus exposes our bitter truth: stuck in this together, we are all aging dogs forced to learn new tricks. For the first time in my life, I am making room for Zoom, a virtual event where one person hosts a meeting and multiple participants communicate through the computer screen. With many of us working from home during this season of social distancing, the church hosted our first Pastors and Directors [...]
Think Outside The Box
Good morning... "We're adjusting to a new reality," musicians in this video admit, "and we'll have to find solutions in order to support each other. Creative forces help us, let's think outside the box and use innovation to keep our connection and make it work together. Because if we do it together, we will succeed." This energizing endeavor captured on film reminds me of the Mozart quote, "The music is not in the [...]
Making Art While Apart
Good morning... "Hi, Sue," she responds. "You ask what creative gifts give us strength during this season of sequestering." Artist, photographer, and dear, dear friend Corinne Adams shares with me her intriguing art while we are held apart: "I have discovered my own Walden’s pond in the woods next door. The “pond,” an abandoned swimming pool filled with water, leaves, and muck, invites me to arrange leaves and blooms on its surface. Such [...]
Turning Fifty-Seven
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 other as possible, like "the extremes of joy and grief." During this pandemic period, we are [...]
Creativity’s Gift
Good morning... When we gathered together for our final Friday class, we read these words out loud from the lips of ninety-four-year-old Betty Skinner. "The conscious and disciplined work of awakening our senses is vital to the life of the Spirit within us. It helps to move us from our heads to our hearts. The marvel of the five senses is that we can experience the same world five different ways. This is [...]
Bourbon On The Back Porch
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 this "work from home" twilight zone. My husband and his brother each pour a single [...]
Overcoming This Overwhelm
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 of 1 ("Honestly, I'm a little bored.") to 10 ("I have too much to complete [...]
Keep Something Beautiful
Good morning... A friend ended her email with a quote from Pascal: "In difficult times, always keep something beautiful in your heart." What "something beautiful" - a hope, a thought, a feeling, a memory - rests in the home of your heart right now? Sense it. Savor it. Slip it into your soul. As you focus fully on this "beautiful something," may your whole being be painted with God's powerful peace. Peace I leave with [...]
Slow. Soulful. Simple.
Good morning... Unable to gather for our weekly class, she and I walked around the public park. We found our place into the spacious stream of smiling people and friendly dogs. During this strange season of social distancing, it was the perfect way to unpack our deep thoughts. Slow. Soulful. Simple. After finishing our sunny stroll she said, "I thought of you when I read a quote this morning." "Will you read it [...]
Coronavirus Is So Limited
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 cripple love. It cannot shatter hope. It cannot corrode faith. It cannot eat away peace. [...]
A Still-Point In The Chaos
Good morning... With the Coronavirus changing life so rapidly, last Friday morning I didn't know if women would want to gather in our living room to discuss chapters 9 and 10 in The Hidden Life Awakened. So I sent out an email polling people's opinions about meeting for our weekly class. A few women were nursing a cold or allergies and stayed home as a precaution. A couple moms were home with children [...]
We Are Hemmed In
Good morning... This Sabbath Sunday is a unique one. As our bodies are held still at home, we refrain from gathering in large groups. Distancing from our normal "Cat in the Hat" balancing act, we slow down. We stay in. We sense God with our soul: "You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me" (Psalm 139:5, NIV). To hem means to form an edge around, to enclose with a [...]