Visual Meditation: A Place of the Heart
I grew up in New York City where my father worked for the United Nations. He was half Latvian (father’s side) and half Austrian (mother’s side) and at age 12, during World War II, he had to flee Riga where he was raised to go to Vienna and live with his grandparents. For my entire […]
The Exquisite Tenderness of Bodies
This article also appeared over at Patheos (click on the link and to the right of my piece you can see a whole list of articles for their discussion this week on religion & the body): Here I am. This is the body-like-no-other that my life has shaped. I live here. This is my soul’s […]
Advent: Uncovering What Has Been Hidden
Every year for the first Sunday of Advent we read a version of Jesus’ description of the end of days. In the Gospel reading from St. Luke this week, Jesus’ language is filled with apocalyptic images of fear and trembling and signs “in the sun, the moon, and the stars.” The word apocalypse essentially means […]
Taking Flight
As I began this year I had an encounter with a flock of pigeons which lifted my heart unexpectedly and then I found a feather on my doorstep. And so “Taking Flight” became my image for the year ahead. On my recent pilgrimage, winged ones – both avian and angelic – were significant symbols for […]
Mothers and Grandmothers
“And so our mothers and grandmothers have, more often than not anonymously, handed on the creative spark, the seed of the flower they themselves never hoped to see—or like a sealed letter they could not plainly read.” -Alice Walker, from In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens Last week I shared an encounter which made me […]
Abbey Bookshelf: An Altar in the World (on the body)
Do you have a body? Don’t sit on the porch! Go out and walk in the rain! If you are in love, then why are you asleep? Wake up, wake up! You have slept millions of years Why not wake up this morning -Kabir “In a world where faith is often construed as a way […]
Wondering
I always find these end of summer days difficult. There is the last spate of hot weather which I really dislike. My sweet husband, a high school teacher, has summers off and so these slow days of spending time together will be coming to an end soon. And probably most significant (more so than I used […]