Happy New Everything

A friend offered me this greeting in an email she sent somewhere within the array of days surrounding Christmas and New Year’s. I loved it…both the simplicity of it and the depth. It was especially fitting in that the last time we had talked, I was not having a good day and was in a…

55 Lessons

It has happened again: another trip around the sun; another candle on the cake. I’ve learned a lot while sailing this ocean of time and space and thought to begin a list, in no particular order, of lessons learned. I simply stopped at 55, though I was pleased to see that I could have gone…

It’s all Here (From the Journal…)

Was just speaking with someone yesterday about how I don’t necessarily need to go anywhere to have ‘adventure’ present itself. Opening the door is sometimes all the invitation necessary. It also does depend on how you interpret ‘adventure,’ I suppose. For me, I guess I’d say it has something to do with wonder, curiosity, story,…

Both Subtle and Flamboyant

Someone asked me once whether I searched for concrete knowledge of God. My response was that I preferred the experience of Mystery. Enticing, both subtle and flamboyant—in tolerable proportion, and always just that far away…until becoming part of its fullness. And, somehow, I don’t think we need to die to become enfolded in its expanse—we…

Until Quiet: A Poem

Until Quiet With you at the tip of my pen, I wroteuntil words found their branches, tucked infeathers, and nesting lightly, breathed inthe incense of lilac and pine,rose, earth, and cedar; until stillness,revealing its canopy, drew me intoall of its dimensions, offered meits hand to enter the depths of its colour-stained span of mystery; until…

Sacrament of Being

Sacrament of Being While out among,quite nearly within,the tidal chords of an ocean’s evening andthe cloud swept memory of a day,I praise the sacrament of being.Praise, which feels like an earthy assentnodded toward the horizon witharms wide-stretched and head tilted back;Sacrament, a gift of convergencewhere humanity and divinitycome together as grace;Being, wholeness, wrapped in this…

I Believe

The other day I was on a Zoom call and the subjects of Relative and Essential truth came up in the course of discussion. That got me considering how long it had been since writing something that approached a personal creed…that included my take on elements of more formal creeds and also things more personal…

Down and Within

After the Wednesday evening contemplative service at Saint Andrew’s this week… Instead of going up to the balcony, today I went down.  I started on the chair but it didn’t feel right.  Too…what? Perch-y.  To ‘on’ and not ‘within’ the space of the sanctuary.  It was like I needed to touch down.  To ground myself…

From Above and From the Journal

From the journal… Went up to the balcony as I had wanted to… The time of day was perfect, and the day itself—still full of light even at the sighing time when sun prepares to exchange the vigil with moon. First thing I noticed was the temperature shift when walking through the doors—so sudden. Where…

Wednesday Peace

Ms. Tippett: In 2006, I sat across from [Elie Wiesel] in a hotel room that my producers had turned into a makeshift studio and I asked him to tell me what happened after he lost his faith forever, as he wrote, at Auschwitz. He answered: “What happened afterwards is in the book. I went on praying.” Ms….