Finding fresh ways to write timeless truth.
It’s no secret: I’ve struggled this year, and in recent months the battle has almost overwhelmed. I wrote on my blog yesterday how I felt like I have failed Advent and someone who played a pivotal role in my messed up life decades ago, and who remains a dear friend of my heart, sent me
Today is Tuesday, December 22. We are days away from Christmas and a piece of me feels like I failed Advent. Hope. Peace. Joy. Love. Can I honestly say I’ve leaned in to these things as I intended? Have I lingered in the longing? Or has it been more of a stumbling tumbling season of grasping
Now it is December. I think I should write something encouraging in these darkening days, but come up empty. I don’t want to wear a mask here, so I speak of the barrenness and trust I’m not alone in the wilderness. I don’t have three steps to find happiness, five ideas to streamline this season, seven
Hope. It’s been a year of hope deferred. If I’m honest, it’s been longer, but this year has been something else. The world, caught up in uncertainty and a host of other things there’s no need to name, is weary. We all feel it to some degree and it’s getting heavy. Really heavy. You tell
I hear a whisper in a variety of voices over the course of many days—all with a similar message. And while there is a season for “big picture” thinking, so too is there a time to dial it in and focus on what’s right there in front of me. I think of times when I’ve
I sit down to free write one afternoon. I am tired of thinking about the pandemic. I’m tired of writing about it. I’m weary of its curled tentacles reaching into every aspect of life and leaving a sticky residue. I’ve had enough of the polarization—over the pandemic, but also politics and the best breakfast cereal
I wake to snow. It’s not unexpected, but as I stand at the window in the wee hours and look out over it I am struck by the magic. And reminded of an excerpt from The Presence of Absence that rungs as true today as when I wrote it. # # # It’s not yet
I grew up in a little house my dad built that was next door to a church. It wasn’t our church—we went to the larger United Church across the street. I crossed the street every Thursday evening for choir practice and gathered with other members of the children’s and adult choir in the basement on
It feels a little like I stumbled. I’m in the midst of one of those slow motion things where almost comical gyrations have taken over my body as I struggle to regain my balance. Only it’s not so comical. Know what I mean? In the morning I return to the peace of familiar words and
I’m meeting someone and arrive early in a part of the city that’s familiar in the general sense but less so close up. I park and watch pedestrians, wondering about their stories, until it’s precisely ten minutes before our appointed meeting. A short five minute walk, and I’m there. I wait. And wait. And a
It’s dark when I rise these days. Still night, really. Certainly too dark to step out on the deck and greet the morning (I stopped doing that a few weeks ago when I encountered a black, hard-shelled creature the size of a Volkswagen). I sit in a wing chair near the window where, eventually, I’ll