Be here now
“I need your help,” I say to my congregation, the sheep, this morning. “Why does it look so easy for you to live so fully in the present moment?”My question is met with blank stares and chewing.Finally, a little one…
Spilling good
“Granma said when you come on something good, first thing to do is share it with whoever you can find; that way, the good spreads out where no telling it will go. Which is right.” (The Education of Little Tree)On…
Take care of the now
It is Easter. The sun is shining. And I had a good day.I walked and read and wrote and gardened. Had a long talk with a friend (phone), answered email from SM readers, fed the birds, talked with Fred and…
When our eyes are open
We prefer life in a box. Which is not completely accurate. But we do want something manageable. And we do want to know what’s in the box. No surprises please. Preferably what we ordered (or at least choose to believe).…
Glad to be alive
I walk every morning. A few miles. Around Fisher Pond, here on Vashon Island. Not far from my house, I pass my neighbor’s field, home to a flock of sheep.Today, I stopped and talked with them. Two of the mamas…
Hope will not be cancelled
Pandemic.Not an easy opening to follow. But the world has shifted. And the pain and sacrifice are real.But here’s what I know: Life didn’t stop. And the earth still turns. As I write these words, the moon, waning Gibbous, smiles…
Waiting for real life to begin
Sister Lychen had a word of prophesy every Sunday in her Pentecostal Church. She'd stand up and say, "The Lord has revealed to me that I will be caught up in the clouds of glory." Every week, the same prophesy.Eugene's parents would make him take Sister Lychen a…
The gift of today
"This tastes like heaven," my son Zach says, eating from a small bag of popcorn, picking out one kernel at a time. We're at the base of Diamond Head, spending part of the afternoon in a farmer’s market on the east side of…
Reintroduced to wonder
When Thomas Merton “left public life” to join the Trappists, he wrote, “I am not physically tired, just filled with a deep, vague, undefined sense of spiritual distress, as if I had a deep wound running inside me and it…
The light within me
Waiting is not one of my spiritual gifts. I wish it were easier to wait.And Christmas is the season of Advent, which means, literally, "to wait." Wait implies that we are paying attention, (one would assume), to something. Something specific. Let’s just…
