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 …
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, …
Reminder: The clock is ticking on the Lughnasadh Give-Away and, so far, I don’t have a single entry for the drawing! Send the blog link to a friend. If he or she signs up and then clicks through to read the whole blog, you could win a set of six hand-made cards. The harvest of …
Tomorrow is my 63rd birthday. Sixty-three is (in my estimation) a particularly laden birthday because it is seven nines – and seven and nine are important sacred numbers. There are seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (there are also nine gifts of the Holy Spirit, if you use a different list), nine noble virtues from …
As we come to the end of one season (the spring quarter) and prepare to enter a new one, long practice invites us to release the old energy and acknowledge the lessons learned. It is an opportunity to empty ourselves in gratitude for all we have received, pouring back into the universe the blessings that …
Henri Nouwen (the wonderful priest, author, and theologian, who died unexpectedly in 1996), lived the last part of his life in the L’Arche communities in companionship with those who have developmental disabilities. In a lecture given at the Scarritt-Bennett Center, reflecting on the experience of living with those the world considers “broken,” he said, “The …