Tag: silence

Silence and Healing

Living, as I did, in an abusive parental system, I found my refuge in books even at four and five years old. Part of the way through my large, beloved lap-book of Sleeping Beauty, or perhaps it was Snow White, there was an illustration which so terrified me that I...

a balloon liturgy

In October, Albuquerque’s big sky is filled with balloons and I am like a puppy beneath a ball. The playful, joyful atmosphere of these floating billboards of delight and color take even the grouchiest by storm and inspire a smile.  Add to that the native American fry-bread and green chilies...

discernment – only a gentle tug

Yesterday, like every other day in August, Kai and I stopped by one of the peach trees by the stables, on our afternoon walk to have a snack and swim. In the New Mexican sun, by late afternoon, the peaches are warm, and so their juices are quite literally flowing. ...

The Sacred Green

This stone hangs on a black cord.  One may see its size based on the key to my car sitting beside it.  My friend Helen asked to see it recently. The stone comes from a beach of a thousand, thousand, thousand stones like it on the edge of the Island...

God cross-legged and heavy

The Colorado mountains are a constant companion in Denver. With crisp, white peaks that rest on mountains and more mountains: range after range after range -like waves with white-tops in a tumultuous frozen sea. I see the mountains from my desk through double windows in my cathedral office and I...

hooded

We all have our themes; things to which we go back over and over again as if those people around us haven’t heard the thousand times we have said that same “old thing he says so often.” We all have those oft repeated mantras which we say so frequently that...

ambition

Jesus models a lot of things, but ambition seems not to be one. There will be ambition in any organization and of course the church adds fuel to the fire by accommodating ambition with titles, ranks and clothing.  But ambition, it seems to me, is infested vocation. Vocation is something...

The better news

The Jesuit Theologian James Martin repeats the words of his Spiritual Director when he says of the Advent of God in Jesus: "There is good news and there is better news.  The good news is that a Saviour is Coming to save the world. The better news is that the...

listen

  "Sometimes it seems as if we do everything possible to avoid the painful confrontation with our basic human loneliness, and allow ourselves to be trapped by false gods promising immediate satisfaction and quick relief. But perhaps the painful awareness of loneliness is an invitation to transcend our limitations and...

Jesus

When I wake up in the morning I feel like he looks.  Determined.  Resilient, Trusting nobody. Standing tall even in a onesy. This photo was taken by my Dad when I was one. 1964.  Not much has changed. But then I sit, as my adult self, and I pray. When...