Welcoming Darkness
Welcome darkness? Not really. I turn on as many lights as possible trying to keep darkness at bay. I add candles, spotlights, twinkling garlands and bright lighted trees to assure myselfthat the dark is not disturbing. As a child I was more afraid. I called loudly for Mom or dad to come into the hall …
Learning to Love
A Small Clearing
It may be only among strangers in airports or waiting rooms, planes or elevators, that I manage to suspend my well-honed biases. Oh, I know, we must always receive the stranger as a guest, lest we miss entertaining angels unawares. But it is only when I have read everything in sight or played enough Solitaire …
Regreening Earth
When I was a kid, my dad took our family out camping in a trailer he built out of plywood with a double bunk bed–the top for us three siblings, the bottom for my parents. Next was a “five-man” dark green umbrella tent. Campgrounds were full of treasures: silence under tall fir as cooking pots …
Momentary Miracles
…how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields, which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Mary Oliver knows what more of us must learn. Whatever we are …
Grace Happens
Beneath this parable is a bedrock assumption of abundance that we too rarely trust. There is seed enough to lose, and the God who makes the sun to shine and rain to fall upon the righteous and unrighteous (Matt 5:45) is indiscriminate about sharing. Grace is flung and wasted everywhere. Brian Hiortdahl, The Christian Century06.29.2011 …
Surprise
Keeping the Faith
Keeping the Faith I am loafing in an enjoyably warm, peaceful summer. Were it not for politics, war and my awareness of the inequity and poverty in our own neighborhoods, I would say I was content. But how can I be grateful for status or the wealth of my choices without the guilt that so …