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Jordan Stones...Blessings at the Gate of the New Year

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  Beloveds, welcome into a fresh turn of digits and a fresh trip around the sun as 2024 opens its unwritten pages for us to live out.  I have shared with many of you that, personally, I am starting 2024 out with a limp .  I have a meniscus tear that is not healing and it will be patched up in surgery on January 9th.  I was thinking how sometimes God gets his best work done when we are wrestling to be OK, when we  are in unsure places, when we limp.   When Jacob wrestled for his blessing from God and ended up with a new name, Israel, the father of the 12 tribes of Israel…from where Jesus came to us.  I would say that was worth the wrestle in the night. (Genesis 32: 22-32)   As we poise ourselves toward whatever we hope for in the new year, the l yrics of a song we sing at church often comes to my mind: “ Whatever picture I have isn’t big enough; Whatever picture I have isn’t good enough; Whatever picture I have doesn’t sum you up; Couldn’t sum you up”.  If you are like me, limp and all
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The Necessity of Beauty to Defy Pain and Disorder

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As we leave October and all of the unrest in the world bleeds into the merriment of the holidays, how do we hold both beauty and the destruction that is playing out in front of us on the world’s stage? I was blessed by Sarah Clarkson’s words on beauty.  She has written on the subject in her book: This Beautiful Truth: How God's Goodness Breaks into Our Darkness .  She encourages us with the healing, transformational function of beauty.  Maybe it’s partly why our Christmas trees do our hearts so much good, the twinkling lights shining in a darkened living room penetrate not just the dark of the room but the residue of the day that may have been filled with too many pastries or parties or purchases.   She has a quote from a podcast I heard her on that I love several quotes from :  Well, [it is only for the affluent] if beauty is about having a perfect house. But beauty is healing those who have been hurt in a war zone. It's creating shelters where children can have refuge. It
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2023 Invitations of Advent

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  Let’s set aside a little time to slow down during advent and pay attention.  We are going to walk through the precious little book:  Silence and other Surprising Invitations of Advent by Enuma Okoro.  It is based on the unlikely story of Zachariah and Elizabeth and has true gems of how to integrate the whole of life into the sometimes lopsided season of Advent.  Meeting 4 Sundays for reflection on the weekly portions of the book, discussion questions for the live chat, guided Lectio Divina on a corresponding Scripture, a simple commemoration practice or ritual and lighting of the Advent candle. For this group offering, please feel invited to join with other Advent lovers for a private Facebook group with a private FB Live video every Sunday at 6PM EST 11/26, 12/3, 12/10, and 12/17.   It will be recorded if you can’t make it live.   It will include some don’t-miss points from the readings from the week. It will include a Lectio Divina reading on a portion of related Scripture It will
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A Tale of Two Disturbing Poems

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I have that feeling…that as we come out of the hush or bustle of the summer, something is presenting itself.  Something that presents Itself with hopes we will say Yes.  Quite often, the fall season calls for a re-arranging, a new-year-esque lens to see our moments, coming and going, what we are up to, our rhythms of rest and work, through.  Examination.  It’s a soul-giving thing to stop and let it do its work.   This poem recently came across my email via more than one list I am signed up to receive…which means you should listen, right?  It is a poem I think we need to encounter in certain intervals of our process…in order to be “disturbed”  toward what is next, in spite of our self-sabotaging settlement in the too small, too known, too safe.   If it is available, gift yourself a moment of stillness and breath.   Get quite inside and when you find you can receive…slowly roll the lines of this poem over in your mind.  You might even practice a lectio divina-like reading of it, maybe
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Boundaries you Cannot See And Cannot Ignore

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Let me begin by introducing you to one of my personal favorite emotional coping tricks.  Prayer Pictures.   What is a Prayer Picture? A Prayer Picture is a term I coined to mean an image or symbol, representing a bigger, more complex or powerful insight that came to you at some point. One of those…an “oh, that is good!” moments or one line from a podcast or a book that was just for you and you know you are going to need it in the future.   When we are on the fly we are zipping through appointments and classes and shopping and relating and debating and carpooling and deal making and number crunching...whatever fills your hustle.  It is my experience that it is pretty near impossible to pull down a complex psychosocial/psychospiritual clarity or coping mechanism on the go.  Our brains are built to serve us on the fly and put us in a sympathetic chemical (autopilot) brain atmosphere.  When we are there, automatic reaction mostly determines choices, behavior, and outcome.  So, in an effort
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