Sarah Westfall writes this:“The liturgy of the little things is an intentional, daily practice of paying attention to the goodness of God that is already around us.” The right here, right now.It’s being where our feet are.Noticing immense beauty in the mundane minutes, the gritty patterns of our Thursdays or our Fridays. Today, the goodness of […]
A Benediction, Musings, and a Writing Prompt
Welcome in friends. It’s a simple Tuesday in November. Come. Sit. Pause. Breathe.Share with me a benediction and a writing prompt that I prepared and shared with my writer friends recently as we gathered around a hearth and crackling woodfire in Canada. Today, we meet, you and I, wherever we find ourselves. Comrades through our […]
AwkwardLand and the Tilt-a-Whirl of Doing It Scared
Tinny music floats from the calliope.Eclectic colors, patterns, and textures create a bright mish-mash.Throngs tramp through. Most hurry to find an exit.Barkers bid for attention determined what they have to offer offers an all-time fix. It’s all a bit distracting. A bit loud. A bit disorienting. I’ve spent most of my life in Awkward Land.Neither […]
We Only Pass This Way Once
We only pass this way once. I sit cross-legged on my couch and consider these words. It doesn’t matter how many times I turn the wheel and navigate my driveway and my dirt road, I only pass this way once. Every morning I arise, follow somewhat the same routine, pad through our rooms – bedroom, […]
A Collection To Keep Company With
The August heat bears down on us. It’s been insufferable, exhausting, inescapable.Relentless and unrelenting.This week has wilted our crops, withered the tomato vines, and waned most of our ambition. The fierce sun and temperatures topping over one hundred are good for only a handful of things.Swimming, splashing, sprinklers.Air conditioning, icy arnold palmers, and as little […]
Souldeep Symphony: Soulsafe Space
“Most people’s souls are buried beneath mounds of activity, excuses, comforts, noise, addictions, laughter, small talk, romance, therapy, and entertainment. We are like passengers on a subway, moving quickly from one obligation, relationship, or activity to another, seldom stopping to wonder who and where we really are. Sometimes it seems like the church is trying […]
Souldeep Symphony: Joy + Praise
“Man is more himself, man is more manlike, when joy is the fundamental thing in him, and grief the superficial. Melancholy should be an innocent interlude, a tender and fugitive frame of mind; praise should be the permanent pulsation of the soul.” ~ G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy I watch the sweat bead along the turquoise tumbler. […]
It’s Me. I’m His Child. It’s Me.
I tap pause.Spotify responds.My wish is its command. I ponder.Spotify waits silent.Quiet beneath my fingertips. Music lines repeat in my head.Resonance beats in my chest.I breathe deep. A haunting compilation of notes and words put flesh to feelings.Pluck at the heart of human experience. This is what great art does. It opens.Reveals.Bids deep reflection. I […]
May Kaleidoscope
Where does LOVE show up?How does LOVE show up?Why does LOVE show up?When does LOVE show up?What does LOVE show? Turns out, east, west, north, south, love shows up in corners everywhere.It colors landscapes, adds spice to lunch prep, leans in to appreciate.Brings comfort in the middle of the night, inks encouragement and seals it […]
April Kaleidoscope
Kaleidoscope:Combined from three Greek words:kalos (καλός), meaning “beautiful,”eidos (εἶδος), meaning “shape,”and skopos (σκοπός), meaning either “watcher” or “thing looked at.”Kaleidoscope: beautiful shapes to look at,observer of beautiful forms.Kaleidoscope:constantly changing pattern,medley, mixture. Kaleidoscope living.An observer of beauty. Paying attention to details. Noticing shapes and nuances. Giving gratitude for aesthetics and texture.Our lives are stories.Our stories are […]
Bring Your Puzzle Piece
If, fifteen months ago my fairy godmother would have appeared in a swirl of glitter and twinkle lights and announced to me that this March I would find myself in Bluefield, West Virginia in the company of a beautiful group of writers and creators at Hopewords Conference, I could not have been more incredulous, amazed, […]
The King Always Returns
In these days of shadow and light, evening dusk, sunshine bright, in these days where glad tidings collide with messiness and brokenness inside, in these days of reflection and deflection, noticing the intersection of past, present, and future pondered, in these days of gazing at gathering dust along the top tier of the Roman shade, […]
The Difficulty of Christianity
The ever and always paradox of a Christian. The tug and pull of formation. The desire to divert to least resistance. The difficulty we create for our very own selves. The challenge presented: pry our grasping fingers from this flesh we clutch, the control we crave, the constant desire of distraction. Stillness equates with lack […]
January Kaleidoscope
One full month of 2023 has ticked away. I love this idea of living as an observer of beauty. Paying attention to details. Noticing shapes and nuances. Giving gratitude for aesthetics and texture.Our lives are stories.Our stories are a constantly changing pattern made up of a mixture of excitement and pain, new and old, adjustments […]
Light Always Pierces Darkness
Palpitating. Pounding. Penetrating.Creeping. Crawling. Corrupting.Foreboding.Disturbed. Dismayed. Discombobulated.Anxious. Agitated. Apprehensive.Troubled. Snaking around and under and through.Shrouding everything it encounters.Sinister limbs lurch and reach.Fear pounds in brave chestsAnd courage claws surfaceward.Breath breaks in scant bursts. It wears oppressive doom as an accessory.A snarl, menace, sneer as make-up.Shadows as eyeshadow to overshadow.Spines tremble. We cringe. Hearts falter.Souls shudder and […]
Bits and Pieces to Delight In {December}
Friends in the Fog Sometimes the fog in the wilderness obscurs the beauty still abounding around us. At first glance a wilderness looks bleak. Feels forsaken. Even a deeper look brings confusion and lack of direction. Barrenness has a way of disorienting. Broken places pierce. Brambles, sharp with thorns, menacingly snarl.Our feet catch, knees buckle, […]
We Are Messengers
Our in-the-flesh experience begins suddenly. The world opens to us bright and cold and startling. We wail and blink, stunned by the suddenness, the shifting from warmth and comfort of a watery womb to an overstimulating awareness and newness. Lungs gasp air and breath pumps in, out, in, out. Legs and arms thrash and pump […]
