Category: The Daily Sip

placenta

“There is something in the soul which is only God….The seed of God within us. If the seed had a good wise and industrious cultivator, it would thrive and grow up into God.  Now the seed of a pear tree grows into a pear tree…the seed of God into God....

Busy: how it kills and how to recover from it

“Hello.  My name is Charles and I have a work-addiction.” “Hello Charles.” That is how the work-addiction meetings begin. But I don’t really like the term “work-addiction” because it does not adequately tell the whole story of the addiction nor of the addict.   I prefer “busy-addiction.”  It titles and...

…and…

This is Kai-the dog.  He goes with me wherever I go and challenges with his very being this idea of an angry, domesticated God we seek to describe.  Kai-the-dog has accompanied me for 12 years.  Every night he licks my forehead before going to sleep and every morning he waits...

Free Listening

Yesterday, in the farmer’s market in downtown Albuquerque, I encountered a stall, a vendor of sorts, that I had never seen before, and it made me wonder.  In a space between a farmer selling flowers and cucumbers and one selling bread and delicious pastries like gruyere mushroom tarts and raspberry...

Go ahead…get out!

‘When some one sees that he (or she) is in danger of losing his (or her) soul, he (or she) does not need to ask advice…” The desert Ammas (mothers) and Abbas (fathers) of the 4th and 5th centuries were monks and nuns without ordination or certificates.  They were under...

the line in the sand

If one were to look very carefully at the sand in this image of the pathway to our peach and apple orchards, one would see three prints left behind by the pilgrims:  my shoe prints, the paw prints of Kai-the-dog, and Kai’s leash dragging behind him. We had just been...

Humility – and why I am so great at it!

(Jesus said,) “Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart.” Mt 11:29 (NRSV) Benedicta Ward, SLG is from a convent in Oxford (Cowley really), the sisters of which I have a great fondness for and whose hospitality has often and generously...

An ode to Mrs. Osborne

We are community.  Me and Kai-the-dog that is.  We live together, virtually alone, and yet not, in the center of a 20-acre farm of such beauty and silence that I can hardly believe God’s goodness to us. We remember Mrs. Osborne from time to time. Kai- the-dog is my companion...

“The Letter to the Americans …The Word of the Lord?”

In the blizzard of emails, text-messages and tweets, perhaps we have lost touch with the beauty of a letter.   Last week I was in the stationer’s shop.  I was asking about new stationary and I used the word “wardrobe.”  The stationary lady swooned. Thanked me for even knowing the...

Jesus and a cocktail

Chimayo is a holy place in New Mexico.  It hosts many sites for religious observance from Zen to Christian to Hindu.  It is a place of pilgrimage on Good Friday to a church well-known for cures.   But I like its cocktail.   Served in a frosted glass – its...