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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …