The end of September marks the beginning of my personal new year. November 1 began Samhain, the first season of the new year in the ancient calendar. But January 1 is the beginning of the year in the Gregorian calendar by which most of us mark time in our secular world. It is a time …
Christmas Eve is a particularly busy and special time in clergy households. The whole day focuses toward the services that mark this night in a profound and intense way that is hard to explain to others. Everything else becomes peripheral to that worship and the preparation for it. No matter how stressed the days leading …
In the northern hemisphere, the winter solstice is upon us. On December 21 at 4:03 MST, the North Pole reaches the point at which it is tilted furthest – 23.5 degrees – away from the Sun. One breath later, we begin to tilt slowly back toward the light, toward warmth, toward longer days and shorter …
I suspect that your life is as full or fuller than mine at the moment. I suspect that, even with the best of intentions and the most careful of plans, you have more on your schedule than you want. I suspect that at least some of you are reacting to the days getting shorter and …
Back in April, I wrote a blog on the spirituality of paying taxes…which I happen to think is, actually, a spiritual discipline. As Christmas draws closer, I find myself reflecting on the spirituality of giving gratuities. Or sharing largesse. Or practicing some small kind of equity in my particular micro-environment. My training in this area …
The world has trained us to think that winter (especially December) is about giving. We are all supposed to rush around giving things – preferably lots of things – to one another. There is nothing wrong with giving: the world can certainly use more generosity of heart, spirit, mind, time, love, and money. Moreover, there …
Rumer Godden’s extraordinary book, In This House of Brede, is about an enclosed community of Benedictine nuns in England in the middle of the 20th century. Early in the story, a financial crisis (caused by the impetuous choice of a previous leader) threatens to overset the abbey. The newly-elected Abbess realizes she needs to act …
About two years after my husband and I began our co-ministry in western Massachusetts, I decided to put a small garden out in front of the Parsonage in which we lived. What I had not realized was how big the front yard was, and the garden I envisioned (and originally planted) looked like someone …