Advent 2023: Margin

As is always the case, my Advent practice has been a bit inconsistent. It comes with the season, and the territory. Suffice it to say that I am grateful for the moments I do have to be still in these weeks leading up to Christmas. And, in a strange bit of magical scheduling, I’ve had …

Advent 2023 – Jesus Was Born To Live

Still battling this sinus/respiratory thing, and thankful for a slower morning than usual to rest a bit, reflect a bit, and prepare for a long day of Getting Stuff Done because It Has To Be Done. My Advent reading today centered on Isaiah 11; I read the words aloud here in my empty kitchen and …

Advent 2023 – It Is Good To Be Human

I spent this first day of Advent nursing a sick, congested body. For the first time in a long time, I missed church; instead of playing Christmas-y songs with my friends on the worship team, I huddled under a blanket on the couch, intermittently hacking and coughing and sipping tea. And sleeping. Off and on, …

Presence

I’m a few weeks in to my stay with my daughter’s family. The new baby is almost three weeks old and we’re finding some sort of rhythm - incorporating some significant changes, especially where the three-year old is concerned. Grandma’s here - all the time! There’s a new baby - and she’s so cute! No …

Wonder, Reborn

Everybody says that grandparenting is eye opening, a huge perspective shift from parenting, for multiple reasons. The big one is always, “You get to love ‘em and spoil ‘em and then you get to give ‘em back!” I’m a little over three years into experiencing life as a grandmother now, and for sure it’s rocking …

Wonder, Reborn

Everybody says that grandparenting is eye opening, a huge perspective shift from parenting, for multiple reasons. The big one is always, “You get to love ‘em and spoil ‘em and then you get to give ‘em back!” I’m a little over three years into experiencing life as a grandmother now, and for sure it’s rocking …

Things I Am Learning

A thing I’ve joked about many times is that my God isn’t subtle. I don’t get the fuzzy inclination that perhaps I should go in this different direction. I get a wrecking ball, and by instinct, instead of bowing in gratitude for the flattening of all that guesswork and the clearing of the way, I …

The Purpose Of Lent

Five days since Ash Wednesday, and Lent has done its work already. In the brilliant collection of readings for the season found in Bread and Wine, Edna Hong writes: The purpose of Lent is to arouse. To arouse the sense of sin. To arouse a sense of guilt for sin. To arouse the humble contrition …

Reaching

Ash Wednesday, 2023. Spring is whispering its arrival with rain and unusual warmth. Every day feels a little bit more like a rising up, out of the interruptive prism of Covid and lockdowns. We are through it but not beyond it; maybe, then, we are still in it? I sit in the grace of a …

It Doesn’t Have To Be This Way

"The thing about awe...is that it works. It helps you transcend the dreary, draining elements of everyday life and see something bigger. And in the presence of something bigger, you get quite small..." Kelly Corrigan I'm reading a fascinating book by Trevor Hudson called Seeking God. The subtitle is weighty: Finding Another Kind of Live …