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 [...]
A dream image from years ago fills my mind’s eye as I sit in Lectio with this verse from Psalm 34: “The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.” (v. 7) In the dream, a group of friends and I are gathered on lawn chairs in a horse-shoe shaped [...]
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 [...]
“Conversion happens in the spaces between events.” Macrina Wiederkehr How I love spending time in the Word with Sister Macrina! Today, using her book Abide: Keeping Vigil with the Word of God, I meditate on the conversion story of the apostle Paul, formerly known as Saul of Tarsus, as written in Acts 9. Saul, a [...]
“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 [...]
I love lectio divina! For nearly ten years, every Wednesday morning, my contemplative prayer group has used this discipline to center our prayer time. Three times, we read through a short Scripture. We read aloud, slowly, meditatively. After the first reading, each person speaks one line or one word in the Scripture that speaks to [...]
Wally and I spent the night last night in New Harmony, Indiana. He had business in the area, and I came along for the ride because we both needed a break in the action, and we wanted to spend some time together. New Harmony truly is one of those “thin spaces” the Celts talk about—a [...]
How often do you get to watch a baby cow being born? Yesterday, as Wally and Joel turned left out of our driveway on their way to Hueston Woods, they slowed down to talk to the cows in the field across the road from Cloudland. One of Joel’s favorite games when riding out in the [...]
I just started re-reading Parker J. Palmer’s classic, A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward An Undivided Life. By page 5, I remembered why I loved this book so much the first time, and why I was led to pick it up again. He writes: “On July 4, 1999, a twenty minute maelstrom of hurricane-force winds [...]