In honor of the beginning of so many things, I share a fiber art piece that is still in the creative process. I began it last week as I looked toward St. Bride’s Day. The image is a cairn from the Burren on the west coast of Ireland, where Bride and her feast day are …
A few days ago I picked up an intriguing book at the library called Who Are You? 101 Ways of Seeing Yourself by Malcolm Godwin. Godwin taps all kinds of different cultures to look through familiar and unfamiliar lenses at our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual being. My beloved husband took one look at the …
Backstory: Last night I was at a meeting about the design of a worship space. I was wearing my theological hat (or biretta, miter, skullcap, veil, ring of roses) because it is very hard for me to take that particular item off, even with the best intentions in the world. Anyhow, during the meeting I …
In the Myers-Briggs typology, I am an INTJ. And I am really an INTJ. With the exception of the “T – F” continuum, I am way out on the edges of the scale – sometimes clinging by my fingernails to keep from falling off. Now, if you know nothing about the Myers-Briggs self-assessment scale, this …
I recently had the amusing opportunity to read an excerpt from an article by Michael Lewis that first appeared in its entirety in The New Republic. The article was about the impact of wealth on the human brain – which is not actually a benign event, as it turns out. Moreover, by changing the brain, …
We are well into the last month of Samhain. Although the morning darkness will continue for another month or more, the daylight is almost perceptibly longer and Imbolc (the spring quarter) will be upon us very soon. Whether Samhain has brought rest and renewal and refreshment; or a growing sense of peace with the soft, silken darkness; or …
My mother was a people person who was endlessly fascinated by the human eccentricities and idiosyncracies she observed around her. She was a delighted visual and, when possible, audio eavesdropper on everyone, everywhere. As a result, she had a well-developed sense of the ridiculous. She loved slapstick. She adored droll and self-deprecating British humor. When …
I was born not far from the ocean and have lived most of my life within an hour of one of the two huge bodies of water that give our planet its distinctive color from space. Anyone who has spent any length of time along a coastline knows that drowning is not something that happens …
High Holy Days open conversations in paradoxical ways. Sometimes dialogue around the extended family table seems anything but. Often it is a rote repetition of past years, little more than familiar monologues competing for airspace. A neutral observer might wonder if there had been an intervening year, or growth, or change, or world (national, community, …