Gaining a heart of wisdom
I cannot abide bouillon in a mug, but I'm always a little sorry about that when I read the opening pages of Madeleine L'Engle's The Irrational Season. She sips from her warm cup, gazes out her two a.m. window at the Hudson River, and begins an Advent reflection that meanders through the liturgical year and the… Continue reading Battlefields and Slums and Insane Asylums
The word "listen" appears in Scripture over fifteen hundred times, and the most frequently voiced complaint in the Bible is that the people don't listen. It may well be the most frequent complaint of present-day mothers, also, and, as a mother of four, I was in love with Adam McHugh's The Listening Life before I… Continue reading The Gift of Listening
Boy #4: What's for breakfast in the morning? Me: Pancakes. Why? Boy #4: I just like knowing what I have to look forward to. Good Night. I was reminded of that conversation and my smile in the darkness of a little boy's bedroom as I read Good Night, Little Love by Laura Neutzling. Her comforting… Continue reading A Safe Place to Say, “Good Night”
In the every day of my walking-around life, heart and mind collaborate. Putting a note in my patient husband's lunch communicates love, but, in my case, it is likely to be motivated by knowledge: he's having a rough week; he did something terrific that I want to thank him for; the day ahead holds special… Continue reading The Apostles’ Creed for the 21st Century
Words are important. Just ask my grandson. He'll tell you all about "boots," and "socks." "Balls" and "buttons." And he'll point these items out to you in the most unlikely places -- where you would never have noticed them yourself. He is in the process of finding words for all the most important things in… Continue reading Words Matter
What if every little person could grow up knowing that she is lovely because God loves her? What if everything in the sky and under the sky were suddenly revealed as mirrors, reflecting God's huge "I LOVE YOU." What if the Bible could be understood NOT as a book of rules or as a dusty collection… Continue reading Every Story Whispers His Name
My sixteen-year old and I are laboring over chemistry together these days, and his textbook has decreed that we are not to move on to Chapter 5 until he is confident in balancing equations. We're not going anywhere right away, so . . . We have spent this week with a printed worksheet of fifty chemical equations,… Continue reading Hard-wired for Awe
Pastor and author Kyle Idleman did an informal survey via social media with just one question. "Finish this sentence: Jesus became real when . . ." The hundreds of responses he received, some general ("I had no one else to turn to.") and some specific ("My husband was killed in a car accident."), could be… Continue reading Filling Empty Things
For many, the Christmas story stands alone, lifted with huge parentheses out of the New Testament -- maybe delivered in Linus's hushed boy soprano, and then tucked away with the durable resin nativity set and the white twinkly lights until next year. It's a great story, so it's easy to see why authors of every creed… Continue reading Words About THE WORD: Recommended Reads for Christmas
Out loud and together. That's how my patient husband and I are reading through the Bible this year, and, believe it or not, we're just about on schedule! Right now we are taking in the book of Acts in great gulps, two or three chapters at a time interspersed with the corresponding epistles. That breathless pace… Continue reading To the End of the Earth
Living Our Days 