Caution: Stillness May Be Dangerous
Sometimes I sits and thinks, and sometimes I just sits.* Except I hide my sitting in moving. But trust me, I’m sitting on the inside. Oh, not lounging-on-the-couch-with-a-soda-and-popcorn-in-front-of-a-movie kind of sitting. No, I mean myself, the part of me who knows she is me, is seated and stilled. I must disguise this as moving because, were […]
What’s Revealed at the Pool?
How do you get in? Close your eyes, hold your nose and jump! Shimmy in, inch by inch. Step. down. the. ladder. Look out below!! SPLASH Test the water … Sit with feet dangling Sunning and dipping. Sunning and dipping. Dive: Lap, lap, lap, lap, lap, lap. You can tell a lot about a person […]
The Discipline that Wasn’t
Dear Friends, Give something up for Lent. This is the challenge to us. Not so we can feel deprived or empty, but so we can draw near to the one who thought up this whole Lenten thing. In recent years, I have adopted, rather than subtracted, during Lent. This year, I engaged the blank cyber-pages […]
From Black and White to Living Color
So, we wait. We don’t rush to the finish. We don’t turn to the back of the book for the answers or the last chapter to see how it comes out. We don’t take the short cut through the peppermint forest if we roll doubles. We don’t jump to the front of the line. We […]
Are You Finished Yet?
What is our perfect number of days? Before we are who our families meet, and our friends know, and our partners embrace, we are complete. Completely made ready by the One who was and is and ever will be. Always. Can the end of our days ever be welcome? A just dessert, a welcome respite, a final […]
Expectant
How brave the mother cardinal, perched atop the feeder, not feeding, but performing, not performing, but calling. With words I do not know, but a voice I dearly do. I am here! I have a message for you! Come! She calls out and waits, calls out and waits, for the answering call in a pitch and rhythm […]
Looking down
I’m jogging around a small, oval 3-lane track at the gym, so slowly, well, okay walking, in the inside lane — the one nearest the railing where you can look down on three floors of people beating themselves up to try to stave off age, time, years of inattention and just plain sluggishness — and […]
Just Practice, You’ll Get it
Just practice. You’ll get it. Some of the most powerful words ever spoken to me. But I’m an adder. I add, “if you practice, you’ll get it right.” When I don’t, I get discouraged. Because I can’t get it right. If I did, I could stop practicing, but that is not the way. So I […]
Does Everything Really Happen for a Reason?
“Everything happens for a reason.” I hear that a lot these days, usually after someone hasn’t done enough to prevent or keep something from happening. It helps us feel better about ourselves and more confident in the “forces of the universe” to think that somehow, they have got this. They ordained this. Nothing I could […]
The Potholes of Life
Oh, how I love seeing black pavement. The snow banks and drifts have given way to asphalt and sand. My tires have traction and there is actually room for two cars and pedestrian plus dog to pass each other safely along the way. I admit, it makes me a bit giddy to step on the […]