Friends, my name if Charles LaFond and I am the writer of “The Daily Sip,” a blog of what I call “domestic spirituality.”
I am writing to ask a favor from you. Do you have a memory of a “daily Sip” which impacted you? Are there one or two you particularly liked? Can you respond to this by commenting or write to me at charles@thedailysip.org ? You can give me the link, a title, a topic or just some key words and let me go find it. I need to send the publisher a few samples for the review process and am told that in situations like this, let your readers tell you what work is best.
I have been invited by a respected publisher to submit samples of the daily sip as we prepare for possible publication into a book – a “day book” of 365 meditations in print along with another 35 meditations on topics of concern to most lives – loss, betrayal, hope, joy, illness, faith-crisis. The book will draw from more than 700 of these blogs and some from “The View from Blackwater Bluff” a similar blog I wrote when Canon For Congregational Life in New Hampshire and also from 150 meditations spoken to the New Hampshire State Senate every week in session.
Its goal is to offer a daily (almost) “sip” ..like with our coffee… which offers real, vulnerable, honest, unvarnished and un-pious brief meditations on things spiritual but also relational, psychological, and emotional. These are offerings about how we live our lives. Sometimes poetry, sometimes prose – and always with a related image taken on my cell phone to go with the 300-600 words.
Both my new books will be out next Fall – a new book on how to write and live by a Rule of Life offering 30 meditations on 30 Christian dispositions of life and tips to write your own Rule and tips on how to live by it. A second book called “Fearless Major Gifts: Inspiring Meaning-making will teach churches and non profits how to manage a major gifts program woven through with the spirituality of stewardship and the praxis of measurable effectiveness.
This Daily Sip book will be my fourth in four years and I am thrilled to begin editing it for review and possible publication as I begin a manuscript on friendship, one on loss and one of poetry.
Thank you for reading The Daily Sip and know how grateful I am for your help.
Charles
We will work hard to make homes.
We will marry people trying to make one.
We will have children trying to make one.
We will build churches trying to make one.
We will ordain bishops, trying to make fathers
we do not need.
We will build bank accounts trying to make prestige
we do not deserve.
We will climb ladders, and be bowed-to, trying to make one.
We will build fires and serve tea or port
trying, trying, trying to make a home.
So much harder is it to realize that
the only home we will ever have
is within a God
whose shyness and woundedness
will always make The God hard to see.
Awareness
10.05.15
Oh Charles–you wrote one early on that was related to your discovery of the bird’s nest among the statues above the high altar. You wrote some things about presence that I love. I used it–with attribution of course–as a reflection for my hospice team.
There are two that are my favorites….
My very first Daily Sip was about scones with clotted cream…and taking joy in small pleasures…one of the many “live in the moment” ones.
One that really struck me included you and Kai talking to the homeless guys near SJC. Kai made them feel really at ease. The 2 of you made the guys feel less marginalized.
Vulnerability, light and sky, and that birds are like angels.
I know those summer nights, CO has a feeling about it–before the sun sinks and the city is alive. Food and smells and tastes seem to blend into one thing. It’s not too hot and not to cold, and being with good friends makes it all the more awesome. It’s a good feeling and I found myself in that place, at least in my mind, when I read that entry.
I just happen to really like birds too.
And vulnerability–I am a natural introvert and I don’t really like doing things by myself. But it’s either go do what I want to do or sit in my house which gets boring. From this blog, I learned that change is inevitable and vulnerability is natural. I can’t say it has shaken me from my introvertness but it’s comforting. I can do this, I thought. You should definitely put that one in your book.
While I am new to The daily Sip it has become part of my repertoire of spiritual practice. Like the diversity of the persons led here, I see there is substance for so many in so much of your creative and insightful sharing. “Fluent in Thunder” is what led me here and I have shared this with others and encouraged their participation in reading the other writings as a tremendous source of sustenance. I believe the world would be blessed through publication of such a unique form, akin to “letting God kiss us”. (Oct, 18 2016)
One of the images that has stuck with me from my early days of reading the Daily Sip is that of the Ute tree at Cathedral Ridge. The idea that we are all bent, but that we can choose what we point to, the image of the tree pointing to the holy place live large in my imagination. I think that your posts, over time, have consistently pointed me toward both self awareness and acceptance of all that has been true in my life. While living in that truth I can also celebrate the holy in my everyday experience. I recently made my first trip to Cathedral Ridge and looked (unsuccessfully…..) for that tree…….