a Sweat shirt
When we have a daily threshold moment, however it may look for us, it teaches us the humility of our own edges. We learn the limits of our competency and capacity. Rest becomes not an enemy or a weakness but the natural result of a life lived honestly and courageously with the Divine.
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Wonder and An Irish Public Restroom
The world is wider than we could imagine, in ways we can’t imagine. If we are brave enough to wonder at the difference, rather than condemn it, something opens in our souls.
We find greater wonder within us when we see that our familiar spaces do not contain the whole of the world.
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The Only Way Through is Through
What the wisdom of ancient Scriptures, later sages and saints, as well as present day storytelling remind us is that great suffering is often the midwife of great goodness. A keyhole in our life that only a rough-edged key can fit.
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The Comeback
For all of history we have found ways to live outside of our true nature when we’re trying to cope with adverse circumstances. We learn to retreat, to hoard, and ultimately subject our souls to strain that over time causes them to crumble. This is not who we are or who we were meant to be. But there is always room for a comeback.
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The Way Has Been Made
If you are looking for a way into life today, a way to work with grace and love others with courage and perseverance, the lever that you’re looking for is this simple phrase: the way has already been made.
The Space Between
What is clear to me is that avoiding the present is to give up on the energy that transforms us.
What is also clear is that God’s favorite meeting place for the human adventure is right here, right now.
(Photo by Clay LeConey on Unsplash)
To Love a Coyote
My enemy, whomever and wherever they are, bear just as much likeness to the Divine as I do.
The Truth About Healing
The truth about healing is that it is not a return to what was.
Lawn Care and the Smell of Memories
Memories, in fact, make us who we are. We have no idea who God is, who we are, and what life can and should be without the woven stories of our recollection.
As I smell motor oil, I remember my uncle. I remember the things I learned since being a child around all the carcasses of cars yet to start again. The hurts, the disorientation that came as I lived longer in the Midwest than in my native South, I remember them.
The parting of my parents.
I remember my and Holley’s wedding.
When our daughter came crashing into the world after a brief and petrifying medical intervention.
It is all part of me, it makes me who I am.
Spirituality With A Dog In Your Lap
There will always be excuses for us to dig beneath the crust of our carefully crafted selves. Some well-reasoned, some anxious, but all of them fear the same thing – reality. What might we find if we began turning over the stones in our souls?
Why We Will Fail in 2021 (And Why That's Hopeful)
As I stand in the kitchen and look at the 2021 jar, I realize that by the end of this year it will be filled with the things that we call “good” or “joyful.” Rightly so. These moments always bring a laugh or smile when we read through them. They make us. They form us.
But so do the failures.
Advent 4 // A Christmas of Love, Hate, and We
The final week of Advent is about the arrival of that which cannot be measured in our own advancement. Though we will move and be moved, we will find our being in such a love (Acts 17), ultimately there is a single horizon in Jesus’ newly opened eyes.
To take the “us versus them” down to the bare bones. To the studs. To the foundation.
To shred the selfish ends of what we sometimes call love when we haven’t been given a proper peek at the alternative.
Advent 3 // On Our Neighbor and Choosing Joy
This year we lit our Advent candles, we read about “good news of great joy,” in the midst of record numbers of pandemic-related deaths. With hospitals filled to bursting and with the circle of “cases” growing closer and closer to us, we read about the choice to be okay even when things weren’t okay.
Advent 2 // Faith Is Nothing And All
Faith in this season of Advent is about sitting ready for the possibility of the Divine around every corner, every day.
And when the sun rises and sets without a hint of something “beyond,” we rest our heads knowing that the Divine has space enough in the next day to arrive & surprise us. That is faith.
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Advent 1 // What Is Hope Anyway?
In Advent, we look forward in future hope but that hope is empty and laughable without taking stock of the present.
Where are we suffering?
What is the reality of our disinformation culture and how have we fallen headfirst into it?
Where is the center of our faith at this point in time?
How are we currently struggling with our theology, community, partner, or our inner world?
Without taking these things into consideration, we have no energy for hope at all.
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Winston and the Restless Quiet of 2:30am
Restlessness is that uninvited moment where we suddenly realize, like the bartender’s trope, “I can’t go home but I can’t stay here.” The restless moment in front of us is the space in between. It is the nowhere between where we were and where we’re headed.
You Actually Like Tradition (Guest Post)
All of this is tradition; it is living history. The way you and I experience a baseball game isn’t all that different from a century ago. If things don’t happen as we expected, it almost feels sacrilege. I’m convinced that we like tradition more than we admit.
(Photo by Osman Rana on Unsplash)
Good Cancer and Where Growth Really Happens
I am frail. There are cancers that aren’t the good kind in this walking world; a world that is both temporary and miraculous.
And that is the journey - that’s where growth really happens. Knowing these things and their little deaths is what makes us more a contemporary than simply dust.
There is where we grow. That is how we heal.
Why We Needed Momma Bird
We needed a reminder that there was something normal going on, somewhere, and that life soldiered forward in its own way.
The need in us to see that the Spirit ignited the images of parenthood and growth within us at a time when we felt the all-too familiar confusion of parents who had gone before us.
What do we do now?
Is this how it is supposed to go?
A Cloud, A Fire, and A Reason to Clean Out Your Basement
It is strange what happens when we are given a chance to simply notice things. The slowdown in schedule and occupation of time gives us a chance to see unseen things. Unnoticed things.
The still small voice now grows louder and louder. Pay attention. Now I have your attention.
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