As many begin the season of Advent and, together, we rest in our longing to celebrate the Winter Solstice, we pray this blessing encouraging one another to bear the light. Blessed are you who bear the light in unbearable times, who testify to its endurance amid the unendurable, who bear witness to its persistence when…
Emotions are energy, moving in motion through our physical and spiritual bodies. As we learn to work with both positive and negative emotions without grasping to one or the other too firmly, we are aligning our energies to support the emergence of our highest self. So, with sore backs and open hearts, we pray, meditate,…
Dec. 5, the eve of St. Nicholas’ Day, was special in my childhood home. My five siblings and I would be in front of the television set or otherwise engaged in the family room when the door into our kitchen would be thrown open and a shower of candy tossed inside. All six of us…
One of my favorite ways to hold gratitude is by writing it down! I’ve kept a journal since I was a ten-year-old kid, but seven years ago I dedicated one whole journal to gratitude. This was my special “Gratitude Journal,” and I even wrote that intention on the cover page. It has been meaningful to…
Prophets, storytellers, sages, spiritual writers, poets and artists are calling us to the wild side! It is time to launch ourselves into the arms of the Beloved, to allow our full sensorium to embrace the numinous world (David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous, Perception and Language in a More-than-Human World, 1996). Spiritual author Cynthia Bourgeault has reminded us…
On this day after Thanksgiving, we pray with one of our favorite scripture scholars and Spirituality in the 21st Century speakers, Walter Brueggeman. In this evocative prayer, Walter risks naming the truth about us, about the world, and about the generous God within whom we pray. May this prayer pray us. The gratitude we intend…
Wagging dogs and insightful blogs. Loving mothers and significant others. Bumble bees and willow trees. Fine wine and reading time. Arts and crafts and emotional life rafts. This Thanksgiving, and every day, I am grateful for the big and little things that make up my life. This practice of gratitude was instilled in me at…
These trees have been my friends for years. Seeing them broken was difficult for me. I look for signs of hope and peace in the Creation around me, one day at a time, where life is adapting. STILL Within the limbs of the locust, the spire of the pine lies broken. Yet, the pine…
One of my favorite books of all time is Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom by John O’Donohue. He writes that “time as a rhythm of soul has an eternal dimension where everything is gathered and minded. Here nothing is lost. This is a great consolation: The happenings in your life do not disappear.…
A virus that attacks respiration has many of us focusing on our breath. In his recent essay on “The Meaning of Air,” Boyce Upholt takes us through a journey of the chemical composition of air, its place in natural and cultural evolution, and the disproportionate and deleterious effects of Industrial Era pollution on communities of…