Good Friday and Easter Sunday represent vastly different tones. Friday was bleak and somber death while Sunday was glorious and triumphant resurrection. But both days actually have something in common: the emptiness came first. The day that Jesus died, His followers would take His body …
I bought this cute block décor, but realize that its flowery words actually irk me. “Bloom where you are planted” is meant to conjure a visual reminder to flourish within our present season and circumstance, without comparing or competing or striving for what we don’t …
I didn’t want the new year to come. Everyone seemed to be ready for a fresh start, or minimally to put a little more distance between us and that blight of our existence, the year 2020. In fact, when Betty White passed just shy of …
As ownership of individual pronouns becomes normative, the idea of gendered language has become more intriguing to me. I ran into this unexpected article by CBE titled A Non-Gendered or Gender-Inclusive Faith: Lessons from Finnish and German. I was floored by the unexpected ramifications of …
Have we ever been down a longer road of uncertainty, where the bends are so continuous that we can’t quite see around them to the destination beyond? At a global level, covid has created a mask over our eyes as much as our mouths; despite …
“This room looks so much bigger when it’s not divided.” My daughter and I had returned to our old home to pick up another load of belongings. She’d wandered into the now-empty room her brothers shared- the room that had once been literally divided in …
There’s a lot of loneliness going around right now. The physical isolation makes us feel distant, and the distance breeds insecurity. We are not only dealing with the question of “Who is still in my pack right now?” but also “Am I still seen? Am …
I’m starting to think that most of the decisions I’ve agonized over this year could just as well have been decided by flipping a damn coin. It’s all very Robert Frost, road less traveled, psychological torment. We are months into homeschooling our kids, and there …
There’s an interesting passage of Scripture (Luke 10:25-37) where a man asks Jesus, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?“ Jesus flips this back around and asks the man, “What is written in the law? How do you read it?“ The man answers, “Love …
The other day I texted a positive comment to a good friend I haven’t seen in awhile. She immediately texted back, and her response made my brain trip over itself for a moment. You know those moments where someone says something simple that unlocks a …