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…
Some days, I wish I was made of stronger stuff. And I don’t want to admit it, as it feels like a defect to be concealed. Some days, I don’t have the words. Some years ago, a homesick dog made…
"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…
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…
It wasn’t church, but I sure said Amen a lot.In the Vashon theater, we watched “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood.” All we were missing was a spirited gospel choir.A dose of Mr. Rogers does my heart good. It is…
Standing in line at our local bank, a friend asks, "Do you have any new books or CDs available?"A teller overhears and says, "You sell CDs? I didn't know you sang.""I don't," I tell her, "it frightens young children.""Then what's…
In the living room, Christmas is still in the air. Yes, the Christmas tree is still up, until the 12th day of Christmas, January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany. I’m content to live this way until Lent. But something tells me that I…
We live in a world that needs healing, from gentle hands of grace.Writer Kim Rosen visited a safe house in Kenya for young Masai women who had run away from home to escape genital mutilation. The girls liked to sing, and asked Rosen if she…
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…
This week a news story stopped me in my tracks.(Which is hardly abnormal these days.)But this story made me pay attention, inviting questions about what really matters. Let’s be honest, in today’s din, that’s not easy to do. After 30…
