By the time we are teenagers we have grown shells like turtles– a hard, outer shell which surrounds our truer selves, protecting what is true and real within us. The shell consists of our cultural conditioning and our own self-image as well as our ego and everything human about us. We may think that all […]

Do you know how you think? Do you listen you to the negative tape in your head? Do you know the source of its injunctions, its fears? Are you comfortable with all that you are, warts and all? Or do you push away the thoughts? Will you do anything to drown them out? What is […]

I have a strict definition of gossip that has come to me over the years: any time I am telling someone else’s story, I am gossiping. I am using another person’s story for my own purposes. Instead what I, what we should be doing is telling our own tales, being honest about who we are. […]

Humility is probably the most important quality that is realized in a close relationship with God. In surrendering our own agendas, our preferences, our cultural biases, our assumptions and our ways to God, we are left with our own poverty, our own lack of knowledge of God, our own small selves. Walking with the Lord […]

  The most inspiring church I have ever seen is the cathedral at Tintern Abbey in Western England near Wales.  A ruin since the 16th C., with no roof or windows or doors, and grass growing where the pews once sat, it remains the perfect church to me, a two-story tall one with walls totally […]

We could call the ancient Israelites rebellious—that was certainly their nature in the wilderness of the Exodus story. Every single time they couldn’t find the water they wanted or the food they needed, every single time they were afraid, i.e. when Moses stayed 40 days up on Mt. Sinai with God, every time things didn’t […]

You’ve read bits and pieces of my spiritual life in these blog posts over the years; today I want to talk about my purpose in writing everything I write. Two dreams revealed my purpose to me in 2011. I had been writing my blog for three years when I dreamt this in June: I was […]

By Your Grace I am no longer living in doubt and fear. I am a reasonably well-adjusted, happy senior. I have a purpose that gives me such contentment to fulfill. I have a full life after the death of my husband.   I could go on and on about all that the Lord, by His […]

This winter I have been struck by the beauty of the bare trees…by how we can now see behind them and through them…and especially by how their inner structure is now revealed. When trees are fully leafed, we only get rare glimpses of the branches or of what is behind a tree. In winter we […]