Stories of Overcoming

Every story of overcoming is the story of Life and light and love lifting us over obstacles, opening our hearts, helping us become the best, strongest, freest, wisest versions of ourselves we know how to be in a given moment. These stories evolve gradually across our entire lives, playing out in tiny snippets and on […]

The Sound of Contentment

The idea for today’s message arrived while I was editing last week’s message for the final time Sunday morning. I was sitting in the recliner we had given my mom on her 80th birthday; I had my laptop on my knees, and I was reading through the text one more time, listening for changes, suggestions, […]

Recipe for Peace

Quick survey: How much peace do you have in your life? Is it a thimble-full, perhaps just moments of peace in your week that fit in around the edges of everything else? Is it a bucket-full, when you enjoy maybe a whole day on the weekends or an evening or two a week? Or maybe […]

Surprised by Joy

Happy Easter! And news flash! The tomb purchased by Joseph of Arimathea to bury the young man widely known for his teachings of peace and love was found early this morning to be empty, fueling speculation that Jesus of Nazareth may actually have been raised from the dead, as he told his followers he would […]

On the Way to Understanding

Today is Palm Sunday, the day we remember the big moment of Jesus’s return to Jerusalem prior to the Passover. I love the spectacle and honor of what we celebrate today, the idea that after rising from quiet obscurity to become a beloved teacher and healer in three short years, Jesus now arrives at a […]

Pinnacle Moments

Last week in hospice I had a conversation with my favorite 105-year-old about the big moments in her life. At first she wondered what I meant by that—most memorable? Happiest? Proudest? What makes the pinnacle moments in our lives seem big? Pinnacle moments might be the times we did something we set out to do, […]

A Simple Mystery

Who among us doesn’t love a good mystery? Think of Agatha Christie with all her beloved characters…Hercules Poirot, Miss Marple, so many others. There’s also P. D. James, a mountain of detective novels, and so many contemporary mystery writers we could be here half the day and probably not name them all. In our free […]

Hearing and Listening

Have you ever noticed how much you can hear in another person’s voice when you’re really listening? Last week, in the middle of a really busy day, I decided to pick up something quick for lunch before the afternoon meetings I was heading into. I drove up to the big board at Panera Bread and […]

Antidote to Disappointment

In the grief group I lead each Friday morning at hospice, we often say that life—especially when you’re going through a time of loss—feels like a rollercoaster. And it’s not a fun rollercoaster, either. It’s one you didn’t choose and don’t want to be on. We can go from moments of laughter and love to […]

What Love Asks

This past Wednesday was Ash Wednesday, which marks the beginning of Lent in the Christian tradition. Stopping by the grocery mid-day, I noticed a couple of shoppers in the aisles with the tell-tale ashes in the shape of a cross on their foreheads. I remember the first time I ever learned of that observance; I […]

The Rubric of Grace

The title for today’s message came to me in a dream one night last week, and even though I was sure when I woke up that it was meant to be the topic for today, I had no idea what it meant. Those of you who are teachers are likely familiar with the concept and […]

The Thinking Trap

Just a quick question: Is there anyone reading this who hasn’t, at some time or another, been tormented by their thoughts? If that’s you, you are an exceedingly fortunate person! Because for most of us, learning to work with our thoughts is a life-long effort. When we are having a really bad day, chances are […]

Forces and Powers

We go about our normal days, doing what we do, stopping at the store, picking up grandkids, walking the dog, and we rarely think about the intricate and perhaps infinite forces that are operating within and around and among us all the time. Science tells us there are four fundamental forces shaping our experience, internal […]

Fruits of a Simple Faith

Yesterday morning, looking out at the snow and trying not to think about the 2-degree temperature, I suddenly had a picture in my mind of lots of pink and white flowers. As the image took shape, I realized I was thinking about what I’d like to plant in my front gardens this spring. It was […]

Repaired, Restored, and Renewed

Last week I had coffee with a friend who told me about a fascinating interest he has: Repairing and restoring books. It all started with an old family bible he wanted to repair. Some pages were pulled loose, the binding was broken, and the cover was tattered and torn. It was an important family heirloom […]

Ready, Set, Pray!

The beginning of a new year is a great time to get organized, to prepare for the seasons ahead, and to do an inventory—based on our experience of the finished year–of what works and what doesn’t. Some things we’ll keep; others we can let go. We can unclutter our closets and give to Goodwill the […]

The Gate of the Year

Happy New Year, friends! Here we are at the close of yet another year…365 days have passed since we last said those words to each other. What has happened in that amount of time? All kinds of things, probably. We set goals and met them. Some we missed. Some changed when we realized they weren’t […]

Like a Child at Christmas

Have you been watching your favorite Christmas movies this year? You may have a list of the ones you can’t miss. For me, that includes Elf, The Santa Claus, Miracle on 34th Street, the Bishop’s Wife, The Shop around the Corner, and of course, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Those movies touch our hearts, make us […]

Celebrate Every Step

By the time we reach a certain age, it’s likely we’ve discovered that life often feels like a rollercoaster; up and down, back and forth, progress and well, not progress. Anytime we have a goal, some kind of hope for forward momentum—good changes are happening, we think—some kind of setback comes along to make us […]

Angels of Encouragement

Wouldn’t you have loved to have been in the room when the Archangel Gabriel made his earthly visits? In his New Testament appearances, he went first to tell Zechariah, who would be the unlikely father of John the Baptist, and then Mary—the young, innocent teen who would become the mother of Jesus—that they were going […]

Beginnings and endings

Today is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the four-week celebration when we prepare our hearts, minds, and spirits for the birth of light of God’s love among us. Historians are mixed in their opinions about when the Advent celebrations began. Some place it near the year 500, starting in the medieval Roman […]

Restored!

One day last week I was on my way to meet a new patient when I drove by the Habitat for Humanity store in Greenfield. Their big blue and green sign out front says, “ReStore” (capital R, capital S), and it struck me what a clever name that was. I was curious about what they […]

Seeing the Light

Here we are at the beginning of a holiday week! Do you feel thankful for what’s coming? For some, this week will involve lots of cooking, conversation, and clean up. Some of us get a day off—at least on Thursday, if not Friday, too. Some gather with family, some with friends, some people volunteer at […]

The Worth of Things

Driving past a farm on a still-dark morning on my way to work one day last week, I noticed that eaves of the barn on the side facing the house were strung with lovely soft white lights. They weren’t Christmas lights, exactly, but maybe the gentle glow of lights you might hang in the trees […]

A Joyful Noise

Once upon a time, a very long time ago I worked for a publishing company as a copy editor. It was during a time when print publishing was still in its prime and our lives were busy. About 10 editors worked in the cubicles along what came to be known as “editors’ row,” where smart […]

Safe Spaces

What does it feel like to be completely safe? Can you think back to a time in your own experience when you felt at ease, cozy, relaxed, and perfectly at peace? Maybe for you, like for me, it’s a memory from childhood. I remember how completely safe and loved and cared for I felt with […]

Falling Apart and Coming Together

By the time we reach a certain age in life, we know what it means to have things fall apart. Plans for a vacation fall through. A project never gets off the ground. A relationship frays and threatens to break. A once-stable job suddenly isn’t. Things we counted on changed suddenly. People we counted on […]

Wild Again

Do you have, somewhere in your memory, the feeling of what it means to be part of the wildness of life? Perhaps you remember a time when you were a child, playing outside with friends, catching lightning bugs, maybe stomping around in creeks. You might have walked to school—uphill, both ways—and noticed the breeze around […]

Is Unity Possible?

Greetings, Friends, and happy World Quaker Day! Today in meetinghouses around the world, Friends are reflecting on and feeling grateful to be part of an international community, a worldwide family of Friends. In our own unique cultures and in our own authentic ways, we are each drawn together from our individual lives to seek and […]

Quaker Herstory

There are so many things to love about our Friends tradition. First, there’s our soul-level commitment to truth, inwardly and outwardly. And the deep way we value simplicity. Not to mention the way we keep working at accepting one another unconditionally, looking for “that of God” in everyone we meet. In this tradition we have […]

Under the Aegis of Love

Don’t you just love words? We use them for everything; anything that links experience and meaning has a word—or many words—attached. We use words to connect with each other, to enable ourselves to be seen and understood. We use words to create and sustain and nurture our relationships with one another. We use powerful words […]

In Praise of Good Service

Have you ever been to a place where the service was exceptionally good? Perhaps it was an expensive restaurant, a small-town store, or your favorite oil change place. Think back to that experience and ask yourself what was so good about it. Did people smile when they said hello? Did you feel welcome, like they […]

The Color of Autumn

This week while I was driving out in the country, I noticed that in some places leaves are beginning to change. The deep green of summer is slipping toward lighter yellow greens, dryer brownish greens, and in some places, tipped with orange. Fall is on the way. We all feel it. Here in central Indiana, […]

Seeing in the Dark

There’s an awful lot going on in our world right now, and unfortunately, that’s nothing new. It seems like for years, we’ve been dealing with one crisis after another—and sometimes multiple crises, layered one on top of another. Unrest in our world and unrest in our hearts can make it hard for us to find […]

Limitless Good

How hard would it be for you to believe–with our world just the way it is right now, with things as unsettled as they seem, our bodies exactly as they are, the future quite possibly a murky mess—how hard would it be for you to believe that we are all floating in an endless ocean […]

Ordinary Graces

How good are you at letting things go? You know, when things get under your skin, like the driver in front of you going super slow when you’re in a hurry, or someone else turning from the wrong lane, or maybe zooming out in front of you at a roundabout? Those little annoyances can change […]

Learning and Growing

How well do you recover when you make mistakes? Are you able to give yourself a break, thinking, “Well, that’s okay, at least I tried,” or maybe, “I’ll know how to do it better next time!” Perhaps you’re hard on yourself, critical and frustrated and embarrassed, feeling foolish for doing something imperfectly. You might regret […]

Quaker Morning

Greetings! This is just a happy little update. At the request of a few Friends at our Quaker meeting, I’ve started our Quaker Morning reflections on a new site (which makes them easier to find and also means you can have them delivered directly to your inbox, if you’d like to do that). Here’s the […]

Our Daily Bread

So how are you doing with your gratitude practice? We are mid-way through our Summer of Gratitude and I hope the focus on thankfulness has been planting some seeds of awareness, perhaps helping you notice and feel thankful for things you haven’t thought about before. I know I’m experiencing that myself: I am feeling grateful […]

To an Unknown God

We are living in a time—and maybe this has always been so—when ideas about who and what and whether God is, are as numerous as the people believing them. All the world around we have widely different traditions that we follow, different styles of worship and reflection that appeal to us. Each one of us […]

Opportunities for Grace

Our Summer of Gratitude continues, and so far, each of our messages have explored gratefulness from a different perspective. Last week we talked about the challenge of feeling grateful when things aren’t working out the way we planned. The week prior to that we talked about how grateful we are for people who bring God’s […]

Roadblocks, Detours, and Roundabouts

If you live in Indiana—and I’m not sure but this may be true across the country too—you know that we are now in road construction season. Teams are out in their fluorescent vests waving two lanes of traffic into one, putting up Road Closed signs, and rerouting traffic in ways we never intended to go. […]

The Living Thought of Love

Today’s message is about gratitude for the power of example, the people in our lives—perhaps our fathers, on this Father’s Day—who helped us master not only the necessary practical basics of life—like walking and talking and feeding and dressing ourselves—but who modeled something deeper and infinitely more powerful that would ultimate shape the way we […]

Beautiful World

As our message for the second Sunday in our Summer of Gratitude, the idea came to me that we should begin with our biggest, closest, and most often overlooked kin: the natural world around us. We are so intimately connected to the earth that it is literally impossible for us to separate ourselves from it. […]

Summer of Gratitude

Recently I made a comment to a friend who is a generous soul, always doing thoughtful things for others, like baking bread for contractors who work on his house, making gourmet treats for people on their birthdays, or hosting neighborhood get-togethers in his backyard. I told him he shines a lot of light in the […]

Opposite Day

When you were little, was it ever Opposite Day at your house? My brother and I use to spring Opposite Day on each other. He might say to me, “I think you’re the smartest person in the whole world!” And I, feeling suddenly happy and proud—because he was six years older than me and knew […]

Remembering Well

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite things to do was sit with my great-grandma in her cozy little den and listen to her memories of growing up in Chickasha, Oklahoma. She was born in 1884 so by the time I came along and was old enough to sit still and listen, […]

A Love That Heals

Happy Mother’s Day, Friends. Whether you are a mother, know a mother, or had a mother, this is a day for celebrating the person—or the people—who have graced our lives with the love and kindness, gentleness and comfort that has continued through the years to lift, nurture, encourage, and help us grow. Whether that person […]

George Fox in Paradise

Today’s message is about the boundless goodness of God and how much our lives—just our normal, daily, human lives–can truly express and reflect that goodness. The inspiration comes from a scene in George Fox’s Journal that has always fascinated me. Fox, still a young man, likely in his late 20s, has come already through that […]

Tiny Truthful Moments

Twenty years ago now, I was nearing the end of my seminary coursework and preparing to start a semester of practicum, known as CPE, or Clinical Pastoral Education. This is the time where all the concepts and theories and techniques students have learned come to life in full color. With real people, who have real […]