So much focus on striving to win always leaves me uneasy. If the last shall be first, I find myself wondering, how do you defend years of training to go for the gold? Most of us know what it means to want to be the best at school or in the office, or to get our way in relationships. These yearnings don’t generally bring out our most loving or generous selves.
Tomorrow the Perseid meteor shower will reach its peak. For those who can find a dark enough spot, who are willing to sit up throughout the long night, the reward is awesome. Up to 60 shooting stars an hour fly through the sky, blazing with a sudden and glorious streak of light
There is something about spending days with children that slows one down and opens the eyes. Many have remarked on the wonder of seeing things only noticed by the under 10 set or those who see the world through the openness of a child or an artist.
by Richard Helmer On Friday, July 11th, I rose early with designs on the AT&T store in San Rafael. It was the day the new
I walk and remember the migrants and immigrants I met in Oregon eight summers ago, during a weeklong walk for justice with labor and religious activists. For some, Spanish is a second language; they speak Mixteca and Zapoteca. In their bodies are layers of exile. I think of today’s migrants in Sudan, displaced by war and stalked by violence and hunger. My life is a palace compared to theirs.
Many of us have learned to find an internal “happy place,” as a way to cope with stress and anxiety. But how many of us have learned to find a real-life “happy place” — a three-dimensional, reality-based, imperfect-but-still-nourishing PLACE in which to find rest and refreshment?
I’m not very good at waiting. I get impatient if the person scheduled to meet me is running a little bit late, or if my husband takes longer than I do to get ready to leave. I try to find new and different routes from my home to the church, so that I don’t have to spend as much time waiting at stop lights. In the grocery store, I make a mad dash to find the shortest checkout line.
Maybe it’s a grudge, a sweet and sour grudge. Maybe it’s an ideology, that has proven successful in this world. Maybe it’s tribal or national or political convictions. No matter what, all of this stuff can become idolatrous, even one’s own household can be, and idolatrous stuff cannot come with us into the kingdom.
“You want me to ride on the back of the scooter all the way to Moody’s?” I looked at this man on my deck with whom I’ve spent my entire adult life and with whom, God willing, I’ll still be eating dinner long after our sleepers have cleared out. And I said, “Okay, but no splaying of my body on the roadway.” The things we do for love.
While the Anglican/Episcopal world sits all atremble, watching as the Anglican bishops speak out in Jerusalem of their own disenfranchisement and waiting with excitement or trepidation the upcoming Lambeth Conference, life as a lesbian Episcopalian goes on.