I just returned from a week end in Chicago with fourteen dear friends from high school. There are so many sweet memories running through my mind that I don’t know which one to savor first and longest. Starting with my roommate is no doubt a good beginning. Ellen is her name and we hadn’t been [...]
Some of my dearest friends are facing tough situations right now. Being present to listen, or to hold them in prayer, or simply to serve as a witness while they make the journey that is quite specifically theirs to make is why God has “arranged” our meeting in the first place. I can still recall [...]
Perhaps you are wondering what I mean by rightmindedness? I think of it as the alignment of our mind with the will of God. Something that I started doing some years ago was asking myself if what I was thinking was what God would want me to think and if it wasn’t, seeking God’s help [...]
As I mentioned in my last blog, Joe and I were headed back to MN for the summer months. We arrived safely yesterday but the trip feels longer and harder every year. That may be the advancing age and the fact that we travel in a Ford Escape, a great little car but it’s not [...]
Wouldn’t it be interesting if the entire country found something in the new law to make them happy? I have thought a lot about this reform lately. Considering all the discussion on cable news, it’s been hard to avoid thinking about it. I can’t say that I understand the myriad details, nor can I speak [...]
Happy St. Patrick’s Day. What an appropriate day for me to talk about hope and how it can be cultivated. I spent many St. Patty’s Days in the bars drinking green beer or martinis with their green olives. That was a time in my life that I was very short on hope and didn’t even [...]
At a gathering last night we were discussing how emotionally wounded most of us had been at some point on our journey. This led to the realization that most “sufferers” have experienced their woundedness within a very intimate relationship. For some the wound is unhealed. For others, seeing it from a new perspective offered hope. [...]
IF IT ISN’T LOVE, IT’S ALWAYS FEAR. I was first introduced to this idea as I timidly began my spiritual quest in the 1970’s. This concept, along with so many others woven into the many and varied books I was reading, broadened my perspective on how to experience life and the many relationships I seemed [...]
Every person we travel these roads with have made their trek to us because they need us and what we know as much as we need them for what they can teach us. This idea has been stressed in earlier essays but it’s one worth further emphasis because of the importance of the journey we [...]
I don’t know about you but I feel a bit discombobulated during the holiday week. I wake up wondering what day it is. I plug in the indoor lights because I love them but it feels somewhat anticlimactic to do so. I feel like it’s appropriate to give myself some time “to vacation” from the [...]
