Category: blog

This past week I attended a funeral…as did three of my friends. Four separate funerals; four persons eulogized. Also, an eighty-something friend told me all her close friends have died. My mother, who died three months short of age 101, said occasionally during her final years, “I feel as if…

Single-digit temperatures here in Nashville took me to the closet recently to retrieve from the upper shelf an extra blanket to make for warm nighttime sleeping. As I pulled down a quilt, I was flooded with memories of its gifting to me. Twenty-five years ago, while worshipping in Salt Creek…

I spent last week remembering the legacy of President Jimmy Carter. From Plains to Atlanta to the Capitol Rotunda to Washington National Cathedral back to Plains. In brief here are three of the many nourishing souvenirs… What I saw…In my mind’s eye I am left viewing a washed-out baggie, hanging…

On the whole I’m not a collector of things. Over the years the one exception has been an assortment of nativity sets that I have gathered from my global travel. I love to bring out several (and occasionally a lot) each Advent/Christmas season. In fact, they are our only holiday…

For several weeks now I have been observing my balcony porch winter garden. It consists of two small red cedar trees, two box elders, and seven pots of pansies. With just-the-right positioning of my chair I can see, through two long, wide glass panels, all my pansies. This is what…

A walk through a Nashville church plus a healthy dose of imagination created the image above. 

241216 The chief of police, Shon Barnes, in Madison, WI matter of factly reported the stats from the mass shooting at Abundant Life Christian School a week before Christmas: three dead (including the shooter) and six wounded. And then, with a tremble in his voice,  he said, “And all the children…

Sans solace / From the bombed building rubble / They pull a one-year-old child / A beautiful girl

Waiting for the dawn, a traditional Native American ritual, has been through ups and downs, thick and thin, grief and joy, a daily practice for me.  In these recent days, waiting for the dawn has become a source of solace and renewal.