Please see the note about my Etsy shop at the conclusion of this blog. Although my entire vocation as an adult has been rooted in a geography of faith, I am not a religious scholar by any stretch of the imagination. I cannot speak with more than superficial knowledge about Islam, much less the finely …
My life has thrummed with choice recently. In among the more mundane choices of daily life (cereal for breakfast, or eggs; chicken sausage for supper, or curry) have been the less daily, but increasingly urgent, choices around the sabbatical (what to pack, which ferry to get from here to there, airbnb or hotel for this …
One of the most beloved books of my middle-school years was Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, written by Cornelia Otis Skinner and Emily Kimborough about the hilarious (at least in retrospect) trip they made to Europe following their graduation from Bryn Mawr in 1920. Which, if you have never read it, is still quite …
On a recent Southwest flight across country, I noticed that the man in the window seat in my row and the man diagonally across from me, got briskly onto the plane, put their suitcases and briefcases and coats in the overhead bin [In spite of repeated requests from the flight attendants that people store their …
By a series of choices and chances reaching all the way back into my childhood, my husband and I do not own a television. Well, that isn’t strictly true – we have a beautiful flat-screen TV for watching movies – but we do not have a television on which we can watch the 617 available …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …