Reflections

I was on retreat this weekend at St. Placid Priory, a wonderful Benedictine women’s community in Lacey where I am an Oblate.  It was our annual oblate weekend retreat.  The retreat theme was inspired by the feast of Pentecost which Christian churches celebrated yesterday. I had an interesting prayer experience connected to my previous post on dreaming.  We opened on Friday night with a group praying of lectio divina with a passage from Joel.  The line that stopped me was from 2:28: “and the old shall dream dreams.”  I let myself be with that image for a while and the first

If in the Judeo-Christian tradition we believe that we were created in the image of God, a God who is continually at work bringing to birth the Universe and the God who “makes all things new” then why isn’t creativity something that gets more attention in our church communities? I think, in part, it is because creativity is threatening to institutions and to the status quo. Also, from working extensively with persons in ministry, church culture can be just as consumed with busyness as the rest of the culture and creativity takes time and space to nurture and nourish.  It

I am driving around Vienna looking for the home of an old friend. I keep stopping the car to look at the map closely and find my way and then search again. At one of the stops two koala bears jump through my open window into the car and begin playing. They try to get my attention away from the map I am holding so I can give them some attention. I had this dream last fall while in the midst of some serious discernment. The last couple of years have been a time of deep listening for me as

For the last nine years I have had the privilege of sharing my life with a wonderful dog named Duke. We adopted Duke from the SPCA in Sacramento, CA when he was one year old and already 85 pounds (he is now 105, bigger than a supermodel!). I would pay good money to see photos of his puppy stage, all head and paws I imagine. We get asked all the time what breed he is and my favorite answer is that he is part polar bear (he is big and white) and part dragon (think of Falcor the luck-dragon in

I was thinking that many of you may be unfamiliar with the genesis of our programs and the different names for the websites, so here is an abridged version of the story: Several years ago, my husband John and I dreamed of an urban retreat center, a place in the city folks could come to at lunch or after work for spiritual renewal, easily accessible so that people didn’t have to travel out of town for retreat.We came up with the name “Sacred Center” because we liked the double-meaning, it could refer to the physical space itself, but also refers