Faith Like the Ocean

       In his short, poetic book named Pond River Ocean Rain: Find Peace in the Storms of Life, Charles Lattimore Howard reflects on how God can perhaps best be understood as Water. He writes that there are times when God sometimes shows up in our lives as a calm pond, and sometimes, God is bestContinue reading “Faith Like the Ocean”

Bad News, Good News

            Before you can even make out the words being spoken, the Kentucky accent rolls out of the speakers, to ask the question, “Who would you say is the most important person in your life?” “Definitely my mother,” answers the even deeper accent of Wanda Jean as she told a story about the love herContinue reading “Bad News, Good News”

Being the Good Soil

When I bought my house, the first thing I wanted to do was get a garden growing, and the first seeds I planted at my house were wildflowers. In preparation, I spent countless hours pulling the crabgrass that makes up my lawn and to my dismay truly nothing seemed to stop this powerfully rooted enemyContinue reading “Being the Good Soil”

The Next Right Step

One of my most valuable lessons from my Sabbatical last summer wherein which I got to walk the Camino across northern Spain, is the critical importance of what I’ve come to call “despair breaks.” A despair break allows a bit of a pause before a breakdown when one is overwhelmed; it takes up space andContinue reading “The Next Right Step”

Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer

            One of my very favorite phrases in this world is, “More is caught than taught.” I first learned it when I was a preschool teacher, and it consistently rang true. If I sat crisscross-applesauce on the carpet ready for Circle Time with my hands in my lap, soon the kids would follow. If IContinue reading “Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer”

Do Not Leave Us Comfortless

As a kid, I was sort of always sick. I can tell the big stories, like how one year when decorating a live Christmas tree with my family, I stopped breathing and rushed to the hospital. And the boring stories like shortly having to go every Saturday morning to get three different allergy shots everyContinue reading “Do Not Leave Us Comfortless”

Changed by the Wilderness

       The day started early, with simple and delicious buttered bread and a bowl of coffee, which, I learned that morning, was how the folks in the Basque area of France drink coffee, literally in a bowl. Over breakfast, I sat with other pilgrims, talking about the day, our hopes, and plans for the pilgrimage;Continue reading “Changed by the Wilderness”

A Trampled Sabbath

       In Annie Dillard’s The Writing Life, one can find some of the best life advice there is, but within the framework of a non-fiction exploration of writing. Dillard is a master at blending poetry and prose as she dances between fiction and nonfiction; she crafts narratives that seem to be about nothing, but alwaysContinue reading “A Trampled Sabbath”

Sustaining Hope

There are some places in this world that invite one to ponder and to consider things that they had never given time to before, and over the last ten weeks of my Sabbatical, my life has been full of them. While I’ll go into sharing about my Camino journey and travels in a few weeks,Continue reading “Sustaining Hope”