Gratitude is a journey.Joy is a journey.Delight is a journey.Grief is a journey.Trauma is a journey.Illness is a journey.Chronic pain is a journey.Discernment is a journey.Spiritual formation is a journey.Love is a journey.Hope is a journey. We all have mentors or forerunners, predecessors or parents paving the pathways before us.We all have associates or cohorts, […]
Abundance, Grocery Aisles and a Liturgy
Abundance • of grace• of beauty• in noticing• in generous living• flung far in light and color• from east to west• meant to be shared• blooms in compassion and kindness• gives with peaceful presence• right in our daily lives• in slow stillness• in steadied measured growth• in perseverance and endurance• from deep places of the […]
A Third Collection of Liturgies of the Little Things
Falling I look at the collection of leaves scattered across my front lawn.Golden hues among a blanket of brown with hidden hints of orange and red. I think about the immense beauty that can be found in endings. I think about Frodo on his perilous journey, Mordor looming dark and foreboding. A glint of gold […]
The Goodness of God Around Us
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 […]
The Second Collection of Liturgies of the Little Things
A Glimpse If you look out my kitchen window you catch a glimpse of our backyard.The rosebushes, messy grass, arborvita.Wooden trim frames the window. Curtains flutter from the tension rod inside the sill.This is the visual. This is what you see.Yet it’s a fraction of the whole, a paragraph apart from the whole story.You won’t […]
The Work of Play
I love to look through a lens.To frame.Curate. Create. This practice is how I show up as a visual artist. When I’m out and about without a camera, I am forever framing things inside my head. I’m quite amateur, two-part hobby. Myriads of people are on the list named “Better At This Than I Am.” Yet, I […]
A Collection of Liturgies of the Little Things
Muted Autumn Muted autumn.It speaks of the beauty of cycles and seasons, rhythms and rest, glory and goodness.It sounds of cadence and crunch, drifting leaves and dried seed pods,honking geese and crackling hearthfires.Muted Autumn.An embrace, an exhale,A metastasis, a muse,A quietude.Muted Autumn.A welcome home. Beauty Bursts Beauty bursts.In obvious places, like flower bloomsAnd arranged bouquets,But […]
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 […]
Formation in the Practice of Delight
I go through the motions on autopilot. Press the garage door opener. Start the engine. Shift to reverse. All rote. Repeated dozens and dozens and dozens of times. He catches my eye as I back my Yukon out the open garage door. Stretched on the porch step, Theodore blissfully, sleepily, soaks in the sunshine. He […]
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 […]
August Kaleidoscope
With Open Hands With open hands, I bring my prayers, my questions, my people, my anxious fears, my happy tears,my gratitude spilling over,my laughter and love.I offer it to You,a sacrifice,my soul sings of doubt and despair, of delight and dancing. With open hands, I step into your embrace,Enveloped in the lavender scent of love […]
Meeting Myself for Coffee
Morning beckons.We chat.My good farmer man and I. He tells me about the status of parts we’re still awaiting for our John Deere tractor, that’s torn apart, over in the machine shop. Coffee begins to hiss, dripping in a cocoa brew from the paper filter where my farmer man has placed ground coffee beans and […]
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. […]
On the Power of Distraction
Dust lays around my living room, but perhaps the beauty of blooms will distract from it. Fruitflies have managed to find their way indoors. The frantic buzz frustrates me. I find the leather swatter. I can’t abide flies in my house or my Yukon. They are one of life’s trials and annoyances. Even the audiobook […]
