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…
Invitation; front row center
One day a very wealthy man took his son on a world-hopping trip visiting "underprivileged" countries, with the firm purpose of showing his son how “poor people” live. On their return from the trip, the father asked, "How was the…
A treasure inside
A beggar sits on a box, just outside the gates of a city. The beggar cannot work and subsists on the charity of passersby. On this day, the beggar receives no handouts. Finally, one person stops, but to the disquiet…
Red cardigan sweaters
Newborn babies dressed in red cardigan sweaters and sneakers. The news photograph on my screen makes me smile big. And I can tell you this; whatever is weighing me down can wait. This keeps my hope alive.Photos can be cathartic.…
What makes you come alive?
“I wish I read your Sabbath Moment before my meeting,” my friend, a hospice chaplain, tells me. “I was just with my hospice supervisor. Her question to me, ‘What are your long term goals?’” “I wanted to laugh out loud,” she…
