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…

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…

While they were there, the time came for the baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in a manger, because there was no guest room available for them. —Luke 2:6,7 The sheer physicality of this picture strikes me this Christmas. The…

This morning a meditation from Paula Ripple’s Growing Strong at Broken Places sparks some thoughts about embracing brokenness as the very site where God seeks to form us, like a master potter, into the people we can become. Ripple draws out her analogy from the words of one woman potter, who uses her work as…

It’s rare that I find myself thinking about Sunday’s sermon midweek. This Sunday our pastor Drew Ditzel preached on the familiar story of Jesus and the rich man (Mark 10). The rich man, who says he has kept all the commandments perfectly and has lived a righteous life, comes to Jesus asking what more he…

The Bobblehead Jesus I got as a stocking stuffer this past Christmas, and which now accompanies me every time I drive somewhere, inspired this morning’s poem: Plastic imitation cheap meditation jumping spinning dancing to your every thought as you weave through traffic mini miracle maker whirling dervish dashboard Jesus in your car, on your heart…

[NOTE: If you’re noticing an absence of images in recent posts, it’s because we’re experiencing some technical difficulties uploading images.  Thanks for bearing with us!] This Father’s Day I’ll be preaching to Fairview Presbyterian Church on a text that will be familiar to many of you— from the last chapter of Matthew. (Some of you…

The older I get the more I’m convinced wandering is essential to rest.  A soul that has come to rest has known what it means to wander.  And, God forbid that our souls should ever only rest and never wander in this life!  This would make us less than human. Our souls can wander in…

This is a poem I wrote this morning. May your day be full of hope: Daybreak When the sound is birds, and the harvest of night is gathering into morning’s first blooms, the silent prayer of the universe for every living, beating thing stretches itself out across the plain of my heart in hope. Maybe…

We often talk of Lent as a season. Yesterday the woman bagging my groceries made “Lent” a verb. The one-inch-thick, pound-plus bar of Belgian chocolate was already safely tucked away in one of the bags when I explained that for the next 40 days I’d be abstaining from sweets and alcoholic beverages in order to…

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