Life is breathtakingly beautiful, ablaze with incandescent brilliance AND simultaneously achingly haunting and hard and hopeless. Melodramatic, maybe. Yet also a maxim of truth. Wonder stops us in our tracks with a blaze of glory.Wonder waits with impatience asking when. Faith offers firm footing.Faith frustrates us with uncertainites we can’t define. Delight dwells in hidden […]
I Hope April Hugged You
I hope April hugged you in warmth and comfort.I hope it bloomed for you in tulip red and daffodil yellow and hyacinth pink.I hope pansies pinpointed your pathway and peonies swayed with promise. Maybe April was lonely for you, the days long, gray, shadowy.Perhaps there were tears or an unexplained sadness you couldn’t shake.Angst held […]
Wherein We Muse On The Beauty of Togetherness
The beauty of a little coffeeshop surrounds me.Music plays from the speakers.One song, then another for an estimated hour and a half.We sip chai lattes with whip. Vanilla for my daughter. Spicy with espresso for me.We chat.Loop letters onto envelopes and attach stamps and stickers.Together. A few locals enter and exit the small-town shop.They all […]
Gimme Some Sugar: A Delightful Devotional Giveaway
April tiptoed in with sunshine and a whole gamut of temperatures with some gusty strong winds dispersed throughout our days for good measure. It’s not quite the April I would order, but there you are.Chilly or ninety degrees seem to be our options. I would gladly rejoice in an abundant two inches of rain, but […]
Wherein We Chat About The Chosen Season Four and Have a Giveaway
Have you been catching The Chosen in the theater? Did you know Season 4 has been releasing in the theater? 🙂IF you’ve watched this new season, I’d love to hear your takeaways and the scenes resonating with you.If you didn’t know you could go to the theater and watch The Chosen, well, today is your […]
Logos
We sing about the drummer boy.He brings the best gift he can offer.The only gift he has to offer.He plays with his whole heart. We pa-rum-pum-pum with him. Linus recites for us.And when he reaches the message the angels have to deliver, when he repeats their words, “Fear not. We bring you good news,” his security […]
Tall Like The Trees
A Benediction: I Hope For You
I hope, my friends, this year has been good for you. Not perfect. Not hashtag blessed. Not even fantastic. No need to glance at all the glossy appeal the highlight reels might give us. Instead, may we gaze around, and in, the interior of our real lives we live one quiet day after another.As we reflect back, […]
Wherein We Find My Favorite Books Read in 2023
No. 1 All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore No. 2 The Donkey Principle by Rachel Anne Ridge No. 3 On Getting Out of Bed by Alan Noble No. 4 My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman No. 5 Enchantment by Katherine May No. 6 Holy Unhappiness by Amanda Held […]
The Gift of Delight at Christmas
I’m delighted to welcome my friend, Allison Byxbe, to be here with us today ~ Allison invited me to share in a conversation about the Gift of Delight for her Inky Collective this month. I was delighted to do this! We had a fun and dare I say, delightful conversation? 🙂 Let’s jump back for […]
Gifts, Hope, Bells, Green, Star
GIFTS December 1, 2023🎁🎀🎄 Right here.Two of the very best gifts to ever happen to me.And as funny as the “puppies” are, I don’t mean Jackie and Theodore. 😄😉It’s true. Childcare is demanding and exhausting and needy.It revealed so much in me that I really hated coming face to face with.Sad truth.If I could get […]
Companions Among Us
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, […]
Our Fourth Collection of Liturgies of the Little Things
Heaven Hugging Earth What creative brilliance to paint a sky every morning and evening.A cycle of sameness, over and over.Yet unbelievably different each and every time.Every skyscape influenced by perspective and place.Running ribbons of orange and mauve, swirled strokes of gold blended with violet and aqua.Heaven hugging earth. A Christmas Miracle A Christmas miracle on […]
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 […]