2023 feels so immensely significant for me as I stand on the precipice of it. I am curious as to what is landing within each of you as you read these words? Fifty years ago I graduated from high school, forty years ago I gave birth to my first born, Douglas, twenty years ago I retired from a twenty-five year career as an elementary school teacher and stepped into a decade long hospital chaplaincy path. In a multitude of ways I sense I’ve been in a long stretch of unlearning,

I cannot tell you how the light comes. What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining. That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us. That it loves searching out what is hidden what is lost what is forgotten or in peril or in pain. That it has a fondness for the body for finding its way toward flesh for tracing the edges of form for shining forth through the eye, the hand, the heart. I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does. That it will. That

The beautiful soul. There once lived a beautiful soul, Who had a kind and caring heart. But none could understand her, So they tore her heart apart. Her purpose was to help and care, Her life invisible. Socially unacceptable, She got through the impossible! At times another caring heart Would come to lend a hand, Lift up this almost dying soul From depths few understand. Looking back this fragile soul Saw purpose in where she once stood, Her modest contributions lead To some

Artwork by Charlie Mackesy "Fixing and helping create a distance between people, but we cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected." Helping, fixing and serving represent three different ways of seeing life. When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. Fixing and helping may be the work of the ego, and service the work of the soul. Service rests on the premise tha

After my child died, I moved into a small house facing the mountains, hoping the sharp lines of granite would provide a solid refuge for the days forward. Behind the house, a lake of sorrow murmured and danced under a grove of ancient willow trees. I vowed, like Lot, to never look back, to not drown myself in the longing for what could have been - or, surely - I would turn into a pillar of salt from all the tears written into my bones. Under the first summer moon, a small gre

Illuminating the practice of presence. “Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.” Anne Lamott So often I can find myself falling into a rabbit hole of my own making believing that presence is equated with doing. If that becomes my operating manual, I may fall into unhealthy ways of being for myself and others. Inserting myself into situations when I have not been called upon and almost always the catalyst und