Good morning... We cannot solve the world's pile of problems, but we can discern the next loving thing that is ours to do. Yesterday, "mine to do" was to pass out some of the little pots of pansies I had created in the middle of the night when our internet was out and I was unable to blog. [...]
Good morning... With our internet still out, I come to Starbucks to get service for the third day in a row. I pull out the brochure from our trip to Montgomery, Alabama and snap the photo above. I am struck by the fact that among all the informative words and haunting images, I am holding the pamphlet with [...]
Good morning... Four thousand neighbors and me, we still have no internet. So, once again, no blogging in the middle of the night. Still stirred awake in the wee hours, I was drawn to another form of creativity. Accessing the healing power of pansies! Yesterday, I had cut some pansies from our neighborhood's dying patch before they are [...]
Good morning... Four thousand neighbors struggle with me through an internet outage. We have been without service for about thirty-six hours, thus no blog post this morning. No internet also means no TV, no email, none of the normal communications I usually take for granted. An insight sparks as I sit at Starbucks at 8:30 pm, writing. Our [...]
Good morning... Thoroughly enjoying our final Monday class, we read aloud some of our favorite passages from The Other Side of Chaos by Margaret Silf. The fourteenth chapter is entitled Yesterday Is Already Ours. This enduring truth - yesterday is already ours - is embedded in us as we walk away from a transformative season together. Now let's [...]
Good morning... Sometimes there is a "before," and then there's an "after." Developmentally, our magical thinking evaporates around at around age ten, replaced by concrete perception and object permanency. There is no recovering what is lost. Good-bye peek-a-boo, magic elves doing mischief in the middle of the night, Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, and make-believe worlds. We can [...]
Good morning... Over the past twenty-four hours, I have reminded myself repeatedly, "Be a reservoir." When I was tempted to talk too much . . . then decided to listen instead, "Be a reservoir." When I crafted a long confusing text . . . before deleting it, "Be a reservoir." When I felt sucked into the middle of [...]
Good morning... We meet monthly as a small group of spiritual directors, learning to listen keenly for the movement of God. Practicing a new-to-me way of focusing our attention, yesterday I said, "I would need to repeat this way of listening, regularly, by myself, processing my own experiences and gradually building up my inner resources, before I would [...]
Good morning... She texted me the photo above after enjoying yesterday's post, Power Drained Out Of Me. Having gone with her church to the Holy Land the day after our group returned from our trip in March, she wondered, "Did you guys go to this church (please don't ask me where) in Israel with this painting of the [...]
Good morning... Last night power drained out of me, as I taught a roomful of women at a nearby church. The requested topic? The Enneagram, an ancient personality test used by Christian mystics. My source of exhaustion? A new group of people, a plethora of information, tons of creative energy expended. The greatest grace experienced? Afterwards, I had [...]
