In the autumn of 1986, I was given one of the most important gifts of my life. By a strange confluence of events in the lives of several other people, I was invited to serve on an international ecumenical consultation that changed the heart of ecumenical dialogue around the world…and that changed the whole structure and …
In the Christian church, Lent began on Ash Wednesday (February 18). Although penitence and penance (words most of us have come to hate without really understanding what they mean) have long been associated with Lent, it would be less emotionally laden to describe this season as one of intentional metanoia: a season about turning toward …
I have been saved from sinking beneath a rising tsunami of meaningful mementos, and (seemingly) important papers, and from terminal despair at the impossibility of ever being organized, by a delightful and challenging little book called The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by a young Japanese woman, Marie Kondo. Before you stop reading this to …
A couple of days ago, when I started writing this, if I had stepped outside, I would have been standing up to my armpits in snow with more falling by the minute (I am in Massachusetts, not Colorado)…so the idea of preparing the ground for planting literal seeds from which I expect to reap kale …
It is Valentine’s Day and I am half a continent away from my beloved spouse. I am spending the week with my father and sister – both of whom I also love dearly – preparing my father’s possessions for his move in the early part of March to his new home. Everything to do with …
Choosing seed is one of the earliest stages of farming or gardening…or growing in mind, heart, spirit, body. Some of us, of course, never choose radish or tomato seeds because we are convinced we have a black thumb or we don’t have anywhere to plant a garden. But all of us choose the seeds we …
Microsoft has just unveiled the prototype of the HoloLens which is going to “seamlessly blend reality and virtual reality.” People are lining up to gush over the amazingly wondrous potential for removing unwanted furniture from your living room. (It seems – thanks to the HoloLens – you can make it disappear digitally by smashing it …
When we lived in western Massachusetts, I had not only an enormous flower garden in the front yard, but a vegetable garden about a mile away from the house in some of the richest farm land in the world. January and February were magical months when the seed catalogues arrived by the bushel, filled with …