Sunlight streams golden through beech and maple canopy. We walk, three of us, mother, father, son, through a cathedral of light. Leaf mold tickles the nostrils, leaves crunch underfoot, and above us, sycamore leaves applaud the day. A wild flutter erupts in my chest as thousands of grackles take flight, flash purple and black against [...]
“I can teach you how to fly.” Those were the words, spoken to me in a dream last year, by a wise woman I call “Macrina/Judi.” Macrina is Macrina Weiderkehr, an author who has accompanied me on my spiritual journey for the past ten years. And Judi is Judi Dench, the actress. In this particular [...]
More magazine, which I enjoy for its insightful articles, has a monthly column: one month it is entitled “This is What 40 Looks Like,” the next, “This is What 50 Looks Like.” It always includes a picture of a beautiful woman and a bio extolling all of the wonderful things her life includes, changing stereotypes [...]
This morning, during Lectio Divina, I find myself in a wrestling match. The verses are from Genesis—the story of Jacob wrestling with an angel on the fork of the Jabbok as he prepares to return to his homeland—to the brother he had cheated out of their father’s blessing many years before. To give you the [...]
As a hart longs for flowing streams, so longs my soul for thee, O God. My soul thirsts for God, the living God. When shall I come and behold the face of God? My tears have been my food day and night, while men say to me continually, “Where is your God?” I carry Bible [...]
I’m sitting on the porch of a cabin in Roan Mountain, Tennessee. A gentle spring rain soaks the garden, and a small waterfall caused by a plugged-up gutter falls in front of my Adirondack chair. My porch-side perch overlooks a roaring, rock-filled creek. Across the creek a hill ascends at a nearly vertical pitch, rhododendron [...]
“I can teach you how to fly.” These words were spoken to me in a dream last year, by a wise woman I call “Macrina/Judi.” Macrina is Macrina Weiderkehr, an author whose books have accompanied me on my spiritual journey for the past ten years. And Judi is Judi Dench, the British actress. In this [...]
Growing up, Christmas was all about the presents piled under the tree. My favorite childhood Christmas was the year I unwrapped a brand-new pair of ice skates, a record player for my collection of 45’s, and “The Complete Sherlock Holmes.” Heaven! I still enjoy prettily wrapped presents under the tree. But these days my favorite [...]
“Our vocation is not only to do what the Word told us to do but also to say what the Word told us to say, until the whole world is transformed by the news.” Barbara Brown Taylor, When God is Silent Is there anything more beautiful than a walk in the woods in the middle [...]
This is a companion piece for the guest blog I posted earlier today. This chapter appears in “Autism & Alleluias” (Judson Press, 2010), and “A Place Called Acceptance” (Bridge Resources, 2001). For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even [...]