Inspiration Faith & Prayer Health & Wellness Entertainment Love & Family
Newsletters Special Offers

This evening a whole gaggle of Canadian geese were crossing the last 200 yards of narrow road leading to the monastery retreat house. As usual I’d been in a hurry and was running late to catch dinner and a room key… The geese stopped me. Like mini orange flippers shuffling off to the local pool…

Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.  – “Step 12” of Alcoholics Anonymous The trials of single parenting and a full-time job have kept me away from this intersection. But in between bedtime wake-up…

“We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.” – Step 1, The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous “R” is for “Recognize.” It’s so basic it may sound obvious — but the obvious isn’t always easy to acknowledge when so many of us live in denial. Our restless souls only…

Good Friday is like last night’s mindful hot yoga class. It was my first, so I had gone with some trepidation. I hadn’t known what to wear, for one thing, so I put on my only pair of light Spandex, which happen to be a shiny, bright, royal blue. A Christmas gift from hubby several…

Just over six months ago, a member of our congregation announced he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer: Steve Hayner, the outgoing president of Columbia Theological Seminary, and his wife Sharol, have come to be most associated in my mind with joy; yet Steve’s announcement could not have been sadder. Still, and miraculously, over the…

I’ve missed you! The challenge of writing for a full-time job is that it can relegate recreational writing to a distant backseat. But I want to keep coming back to this intersection, because I find that when I’m away from it, my capacity to carve out space for reflection and find spiritual breathing room suffers,…

This last week has been insane. Family sickness, repairs, car issues, multiple calls from school nurses, including one in which the nurse expressed concern my 7-year-old son had been bitten by a brown recluse spider…and just when I thought it couldn’t get worse…viral pinkeye. Two puffy, leaky, red hot swollen eyes and multiple doctor visits…

Fellow saints and sinners, I’m starting a (like most things here) irregular series called “Quotes of the Week.”  These are just various snippets of wit and charm I run across during the week, and that I’ve not had time to write a deeper reflection on but which struck me and which I want to remember…

It feels a bit like Groundhog Day: wasn’t it just a couple months ago that I was sharing a granddaughter’s reflections upon the death of a grandparent?  This past Saturday, my granddad John slipped away suddenly to join his late wife Peggy of 68 years who had been his companion until two months ago. Just…

Thanks for bearing with yesterday’s rant against gun rights legislation in Georgia. On another note, I was delighted to learn that Beliefnet has done a special promotion piece for my book Grace Sticks, featuring an extended excerpt from the first chapter.  Here it is for prospective readers.
archives most recent
search this blog
More from Beliefnet and our partners
More from Beliefnet and our partners