Good morning... "I'm glad God is not fair," said the middle aged man who battled through life-shattering addiction to become a husband at age forty-two and a father at forty-four then again at forty-six. His story reminds me of the quote that ends Falling Upward by Richard Rohr. "Just remember: no one can keep you from the second [...]
Good morning... She sat with me peacefully honest, straddling the first half of life and the second, shedding her false self to free her true, mothering a teenage son, no longer a boy, not quite at man. When she pulled out her phone and slowly read aloud to me this poem, my heart resonated with each word. What [...]
Good morning... "Good vines require cutting and more cutting," says Sr. Judith Sutera, a Benedictine nun and vinedresser. "A mile of runners won't give you one more grape, so get rid of the branches that do not bear fruit. Do you want to keep everything? Then expect nothing. Cut. And then cut some more." By nature, I am [...]
Good morning... Oops. My mistake. Our friend Betty Skinner turned 94-years-old yesterday, not Saturday as I jumped the gun and announced. Again I am humbly reminded, I am a big picture person, not a detail diva. Yet God now morphs my mistake into another opportunity. Kitty Crenshaw, co-author of the book we are studying this semester, The Hidden Life [...]
Good morning... How do we grow up into our Christlike true self? We follow in the faithful footprints left by Jesus as he walked his short lifetime on this dusty earth. We listen to Jesus' constant encouragement: “Ask and keep on asking and it will be given to you; seek and keep on seeking and you will find; knock [...]
Good morning... "I don't know exactly why or even when the idea came to me that I should keep a ledger on deep-felt thoughts," writes Betty Skinner the heroine of our semester's book, who is gracefully celebrating her 94th birthday today. "I have experienced that on one level, in matters of the heart, we are all alone, isolated, [...]
Good morning... On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I read aloud to each class the series of Scripture verses filling yesterday's post. We opened our inner ears to notice the words touching our hearts, then we popcorn-ed out our phrases beneath the heading "Our Hidden Life." As we recorded our reflections, together we scribbled God's answer to our deepest [...]
Good morning... Teaching my favorite book on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, I ponder the title, The Hidden Life Awakened. Beneath our many layers, I wonder, "God, what is this 'hidden life' secreted in our depths?" The Word of God illuminates our answer. God said, Let Us [Father, Son, and Holy Spirit] make mankind in Our image, after Our [...]
Good morning... I used to think I needed older, wiser mentors watering my seeds of faith, people pouring into me, helping me to grow. At the same time, I thought I was designed to be an older, wiser mentor, pouring into the lives of others, helping them to grow. Me being poured into so I could pour out. [...]
Good morning... "Many words rush along like rivers in flood, but deep wisdom flows up from artesian springs," says Proverbs 18:4 in The Message translation. "The words of the mouth are deep waters, but the fountain of wisdom is a rushing stream," says Proverbs 18:4 in the New International Version. "The words of a man’s mouth are like deep waters [copious [...]
