Some years we need Christmas as if our whole life depended on it. Maybe this has been a challenging year in mind, body and spirit, more dark days than light. Maybe you do your best to conceal it but underneath you are lonely, afraid, and short on hope. Or maybe
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Boy do I have a Christmas gift for you! My friend and fellow Sewanee grad, now a popular professor of English at Belmont University, and the author of several celebrated books, has written what I believe to be the spiritual book of the year! In a world that feels coarse
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It's Thanksgiving week! I am running around picking up coconut cake, pecan pies, salad greens from the Farmer's Market, bread from the bakery, and fresh cranberries. I am excited to gather around the table, actually we will need many tables, with my sisters, brothers-in law, parents and 16 kids. There
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I don't know what has happened. For over 26 years, I have watched my husband's enthusiasm—devotion—to football. The moment the TV switched on, that was my cue. Go for a hike. Take a lavender Epson salt bath. Fix a cup of tea and curl up with a book. Something
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I recently rediscovered the special book, A Book of Hours, by Thomas Merton. Merton writes, "We do not know we are full of paradise because we are so full of our own noise that we cannot hear God singing us and all things into beauty." I am learning that when
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I am an avid fan of Bono and his iconic band U2. What I didn't know until recently was that Bono is a passionate seeker of God. Recently, I listened to a beautiful conversation between the rock star and Eugene Peterson, one of the most treasured writers and theologians of
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I became a beekeeper for three reasons: One, I love honey. Two, I know the bees are integral to the health and survival of our planet. And three, having watched a friend working in his hive, a portrait of calm in the center of a bee swarm storm, I wanted
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When attending a funeral, we are brought to an uncomfortable but clarifying edge between life from death. The internal troubling conversation begins. We know deeply what a gift it is to be a human and extraordinarily kin to God. Our time here is short to be filled with all the
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Today is the book release for my dear friend Tallu Schuyler Quinn's masterpiece, What I Wish Were True! have relished Tallu’s prose, poetry and prayers for fifteen years. As an artist, a theologian, but especially a lover of life, her words touch the sacred and deep in all of
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There is no cure for mortality. Golgotha is in my future and yours. As did Jesus, we will experience that terrifying reckoning of body and spirit; a definitive break of what was before and what will be. Jesus modeled for us the trepidation, the paralyzing fear, the grief, the doubt,
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