My Creative Process
Here goes: Begin with “You are loved, whether you produce anything today or not.” Your offering is already acceptable. You have brought yourself to this day. Surround yourself with the things you enjoy, people you love and the things you love to do. Begin. If it flows, continue. If not, set it aside and begin again. […]
God Bless America: The verse we have forgotten
Did you know that God Bless America doesn’t start with the words God Bless America? There is a verse preceding the chorus we know as the song. It is a preamble, if you will, or a statement of intention about the words to be sung. This is how God Bless America really begins: “While the storm […]
Pure Joy! It’s Your Party!
It’s complete pandemonium, folks! The crowd roars as the team is announced. They break into song as the players stride to the podium. The roar is deafening as they hoist the championship trophy. It is ours. After decades of waiting and a lifetime of work, we have won it! Pure joy! This is the scene as […]
Firm Outside, Flexible Inside
Inflexible, rigid, immovable, carved in stone…There’s a place for these, but in me is not that place. I’m meant to give. My body says so. I’m meant to be flexible, able to bend against the storms of life and not snap. I’m meant to be supple, easily folded, twisted and worked into shape. I’m meant to be […]
The Nesting Tree
You would have loved my mom. She was diligent and dutiful, industrious and ingenious, fashionable and fastidious, a loyal friend and devoted spouse. If there were room-moms back then, she would’ve been a great one. If there were sports-Mom awards given, she would have been well-decorated. She cooked a mean pot roast, prepared an awesome peach pie and baked chocolate […]
Join Your Life, Already in Progress
“I have so many choices facing me right now, Guiding God…I listen for your voice. I listen with an open heart. I trust that you will guide me to the right choices. In this trusting, I am going to move out in faith and open the doors in front of me… Ever present God, the […]
What is Silence?
Silence. not, “Quiet!” not, “Enough already!” not, “Shut the ____ up!” These leave a ringing in the ears that deafens. Dulls the senses. Obliterates the moment. Castigates the quiet. Silence, you are not this. Silence, neither are you the quiet left by absence, which shutters the senses. You ring hollow, mournful, empty. Silence, you are […]
Can we hurry patiently?
Patience is an ever present alternative to the mind’s endemic restlessness and impatience. Scratch the surface of impatience and what you will find lying beneath it, subtly or not so subtly, is anger. It’s the strong energy of not wanting things to be the way they are and blaming someone (often yourself) or some thing […]
Did the Resurrection really happen?
Does it matter if the Resurrection actually happened? This was the question we considered in my adult Sunday School class at a church I used to belong to. I was a regular at Sunday school, where we considered issues of faith and its practice as a matter of course. Sunday school was organized and led […]
Who are you voting for?
What if they held an election and no one showed up? Well, I don’t know, we’d have to consult the Constitution but perhaps there is provision for that… What if they held an election and each one, every single one of us, wrote our names in as a vote for ourselves? There would be a […]