• Joy Conference Session Three
• Joy Conference Session Two
• Joy Conference

Sipping tea in my amazing new to me teapot and feeling my soul stretch. I am excited to be bringing A Soul Care Minute back to the air, just one of many new growth shoots I feel rising to the surface. One of the quotes that keep stirring :

You will be surprised to know how far you can go from the point where you thought it was the end

Robins have returned to the mountain, and with them a promise of Spring. I love the cyclical movements embedded in our lives. Deep white quiet yields to brown earth crawling with life.

Shut in, quarantined, masked, shut down, silenced, canceled…what a year this has proven to be. We moved from the decade of Ayin,( to watch) into the decade of the Peh,( the mouth or to speak) in Hebrew. We are currently in year 5781 Peh-Aleph…Aleph is God’s number. It is the number One. We have an opportunity to align our mouth with the things of God. To allow true speech and voice to go out into the darkness desperately trying to silence the WORD. I have been challenged by The Spirit to speak more blessing into my life and those around me, for blessing is the language of the kingdom and the rite/duty of the priest. I was stunned when I took soul inventory of how many words of cursing I allow to flow out of my mouth . If life and death are in the power of the tongue, how much death have I spoken while wondering why the fight for life around me is so wearying? I believe it is time for us to change our speech. To speak over our homes, our business, our church, our children, our family words that increase capacity for revelation of the goodness of God. Capacity for the blessing of God to descend upon life in abundance. Capacity for the fullness of the indwelling life of Christ to manifest in us.

This is how I want to journey through 2021. A Mouth Full of Blessing.

I fell asleep to a sigh in my soul around the words “sometimes, it’s a fight to open the gift”. In these days of quarantine silence, and separation the anticipation of the day ahead can be more fearful than joyful. I have never felt more keenly the awareness of the battle for the mind raging around me as in these days. What will I think upon? Where will my thoughts lead my heart? What will I conceive in my soul from the womb of my ears? The choice to live, and that fully and abundantly is war. It is a knock out drag down kind of battle against the voices in the air. The air of my own breath, others vehement breathings. Covid 19…is just another name for a fight against the principality of the air. I must make the choice to breathe the air that fills my lungs with courage. It is interesting to me to be suffering from the symptom of no taste or smell….this is absolutely horrendous to me. It offends me. I have come to realize so much of what I savor in this life comes from the smells and tastes around me. They anchor me, comfort me, satisfy me, challenge me-who am I without this? I look at the gift of the day in front of me…and I don’t want to open it. Then I hear it….”taste and see that the Lord is good”. Spirit knows, we are moved by our palate both physically and spiritually. The gift of my day sparkles a bit more as I contemplate the challenge whispered before me of exercising spiritual taste and smell. What DOES the goodness of the Lord taste like? What is the fragrance of Grace? What explosion of flavor occurs when you mix justice and mercy? What is the color of a soul infused with love? Now, where did I put that apron?

So, we are commanded to shelter in place. Hmm…how fitting.  I am writing a 21 day devotional entitled: Don’t Waste The Waiting. Join me in this journey as we discover the hindrances to silence, the wrenching of waiting, the joy of patience.

See you in the Cyber.

Don’t Waste The Waiting Devotional Journey -Ebook Sample

I want to join the journey!! Sign Me Up!

A shout out to everyone who has had to make, “that” call.  You know the one…

“Her brain isn’t registering activity”

“Her kidneys are shut down”

“Time to remove the tube, cord, monitor….plug”

“Doc, she isn’t getting any better, can you come to us and help her cross over the rainbow bridge, she won’t make it up those stairs…”

Yeah, those calls.  I made those difficult calls when my mother and father’s lives were laid trustingly into my hands at the end of their days. I did what they had wished, what they had asked, what was best…but, you never stop wondering if you had done enough….

Her I am again, only it is a first for me.   Katie Girl, our  beautiful Chesapeake Bay Retriever is in agony, fighting to breathe, fighting to smile, and sit, and eat… Most of our four footed furries met their end tragically at the hands of someone else, or something else…I’ve never had to look into loving, loyal, tired eyes and make a decision to end a life.

She saved my husband from a fiery death, I couldn’t save her from disease.

Death comes at 4pm. It is 2:30pm and here we all are, walking the floors in a waiting room of sorts, waiting to love a life over instead of inviting one in.

There has to be a place for a love like this. There has to be “something ever after” for this kind of loyalty and devotion.

So, to my loved furries who left too soon:  Jojo, Beelerbug, Shasta,Babe, Ice, Maggie, Keano,Challis,  I send you our Beloved Katie. Share a bone, and a romp in the fields of grace.

Here is to that last car ride, may the wind forever be in your face.

In loving memory

Katie-02/19/2019

I can feel you.

Let Me LIVE!

I hear the sound of your voice,

walking on my insides

around the words I see your face-

Paint me into place!

I can feel you press against my conscious.

The enormity of you, and I am afraid.

Can I give you the life you are begging for?

Will my weak attempts at breath leave you asthmatic?

Congested? Fatigued?

Will I see the sadness in your countenance

as you gaze into the pools

dismayed at your reflection?

I am only made in the image and likeness.

I am no god

I am no creator

You place a single grain of sand into my hand

WRITE ME!

I awoke to an old Cat Stevens song released in 1971. I was one year old. I too was new to the world, to the light, to the beauty of first things, and the power of resurrection.

 As I grew dawn would fascinate me. I would often rise to my bedroom window and gaze to the east watching the deep darkness give way time and time again to the ancient decree:  “Let there be light!” This declaration would hold me anchored to hope, when my own darkness would refuse to yield.  How kind of God to set before us a promise and a hope before we ever took our first breath.

As the sun continues to rise, darkness will continue to yield-the pain is not forever, the whispers are not forever, death  is not forever. We don’t have to be afraid of the shades and the shadows that cling to the walls of our imaginations. There is light promised.

I wonder if that great conversation between God and Ezekiel happened while darkness still clung to the earth in the predawn primordial dark….”Can these bones live?”

Did he survey the vision and speak his response as the golden elixir of life burst upon the horizon touching the bleached bones of the plain. “You alone know…”

I feel myself standing there in that space. I feel that question asked of me in the early hours of morning.  I hear the rattling of the things that long for life to be spoken to them, waiting for me to prophecy the truth. Spirit stands with me in the darkness of my unknowing and asks. “Can you live?” I whisper back to him….”You alone know”

What are your bones? Marriage? Finance? Children? Health?

Morning has broken….speak to the bones.

Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the world

Sweet the rain’s new fall, sunlit from heaven
Like the first dewfall on the first grass
Praise for the sweetness of the wet garden
Sprung in completeness where his feet pass

Mine is the sunlight
Mine is the morning
Born of the one light Eden saw play
Praise with elation, praise ev’ry morning
God’s recreation of the new day

Morning has broken like the first morning
Blackbird has spoken like the first bird
Praise for the singing
Praise for the morning
Praise for them springing fresh from the world

There are words, ancient-wise.

Words that speak of seasons, and times for all that is under the sun.

Words that give us breath-pause, eyesight in the darkness of pain.

Words that can create in us space for the life we have been given.

Words that can take back the lie that we are only randomness and replace it with truth-

We are purpose.

We are rhythm as old as the first spin of the blue planet.

Do you hear them?

Are you quiet enough to understand the sound of your heart that manifests wet upon your cheeks. The blood of your eyes, for the rending of your heart. Do you know the season of deep listening?

Our lives belong to seasons: Birth, death, planting, reaping, killing, healing, destruction and building.

Seasons of weeping and laughter, wailing and cheering.

Seasons where we are lovers, and seasons of abstinence.

Times when we embrace, and time when we let go.

There are moments when we must rip apart and times when we must carefully mend the threads of our lives. 

There are seasons of voice, and seasons of silence, seasons of war and seasons of peace. 

Do you hear the resonance of The Why?

The vocation of our lives is to live! Fully aware and present, dressed according to the places of our sojourn.  Dancing shoes, widow’s veil, poor mans cape, rich mans cloak.  We carry within us the grace of transition. We hold eternity in our hearts.

Move then fellow sojourner. Allow your body to feel the churning, turning, aching depth of your soul. For there remains a promise in the crashing darkness -A Spirit filled hovering, that awaits to create from the chaos a beautiful meaningful life.

Speak to the waves.

I will place this here.

Like, seed for the weary feathered ones travelling home.

Like, water in a dish for the long walk around.

Like a moment of beauty captured in the break between storms.

A word for those making their own tear soup, from a companion gone ahead of us, who has made his.

John O’Donohue’s poem on grief

By: John O’Donohue

Posted: June 13, 2016

When you lose someone you love,
Your life becomes strange,
The ground beneath you becomes fragile,
Your thoughts make your eyes unsure;
And some dead echo drags your voice down
Where words have no confidence
Your heart has grown heavy with loss;
And though this loss has wounded others too,
No one knows what has been taken from you
When the silence of absence deepens.

Flickers of guilt kindle regret
For all that was left unsaid or undone.

There are days when you wake up happy;
Again inside the fullness of life,
Until the moment breaks
And you are thrown back
Onto the black tide of loss.
Days when you have your heart back,
You are able to function well
Until in the middle of work or encounter,
Suddenly with no warning,
You are ambushed by grief.

It becomes hard to trust yourself.
All you can depend on now is that
Sorrow will remain faithful to itself.
More than you, it knows its way
And will find the right time
To pull and pull the rope of grief
Until that coiled hill of tears
Has reduced to its last drop.

Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed;
And when the work of grief is done,
The wound of loss will heal
And you will have learned
To wean your eyes
From that gap in the air
And be able to enter the hearth
In your soul where your loved one
Has awaited your return
All the time.

John O’Donohue