When we moved to Seattle the winters became more pronounced. I didn’t think moving 600 miles north would make such a difference, but we easily have three hours more darkness in the winter than when we lived in Northern California. It also feels more perceptible because the sky is often gray and the sun that much [...]
Archive for November, 2006
Advent Resources
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Classes are canceled across Seattle today, my husband got the phone call at 5:00 a.m. notifying him (he teaches high school) and Seattle University posted their announcement soon after. Apparently even though there hasn't been much snowfall in the city, the low temperatures have made for icy and dangerous driving conditions. Snow and below freezing temperatures are unusual [...]
Waters of New Birth
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Painting is "Waters of Baptism" by Tim Mooney Tim audited a class I co-taught while living in Berkeley. A good friend and I received a grant from the Practicing Our Faith people to teach a class on creativity as Christian spiritual practice (you can read a summary here) in the spring of 2003. It was a great [...]
What Are You Birthing?
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Advent begins next Sunday, the start of a new year in Christian calendars. The word Advent comes from the Latin Adventus meaning coming. It is a season of waiting with anticipation for the coming of Christ and the incarnation, God made flesh, culminating in the season of Christmas. In Advent we are invited to be present [...]
Blessing the Bread
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I just had to share two more things before I head to the airport. I awoke early and so had time to discover a stunning post on Jen Lemen's blog today about Love and another poem from Panhala, again by Lynn Ungar (according to Amazon her book is out of print, I think I need [...]
Giving Thanks
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One of the things I love about Thanksgiving is that it is one of those holidays that has escaped a lot of the consumer frenzy (except as a preamble to one of the biggest shopping days of the year). I also love that it is a secular holiday centered on feasting and gratitude. I have so [...]
Signs of Winter
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I went on a lovely walk this morning, my usual 45-minute walk from my house, up and around Volunteer Park, and then back home. It was a crisp and clear morning, another short break from the heavy rains we have been getting. The leaves have largely made their floating pilgrimage to the ground. They now wait for decay [...]
In Preparation for a Pilgrimage of Ancestry
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Next summer my husband and I will be taking a five-week trip to Ireland and Austria. We saved up our frequent flyer miles for free tickets and without a dog at home to worry about leaving behind for that long, we decided to seize the opportunity. (We will definitely get another dog eventually, but have decided [...]
Cello Dreams and Synchronicity
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I have been having dreams lately of cellos. The cello is my favorite instrument and I have always wanted to learn to play sometime in my life. The first two dreams were brief: In the first I am lying down on a bed and a man hands me a cello and tells me to play horizontally and I can beautifully [...]
The Practice of Dream-Tending
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Dreams All night the dark buds of dreams open richly. In the center of every petal is a letter, and you imagine if you could only remember and string them all together they would spell the answer. It is a long night, and not an easy one– you have so many branches, and there are [...]
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