Easter. Rebirth. Resurrection. Spring. It is also the time when we celebrate the Resurrection. Or, if you’re like me, puzzle over it, filled with questions and doubt: did Jesus resurrect bodily, or was it a mystical return from the dead? Had he fully died? Maybe he went into a...
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Every month, as I sit down to write my blog, I think, “This will be my last post. It’s time to stop. Too many people are creating, publishing, screaming for recognition, for me to add one more word.” (As if anyone is actually reading my posts, itself perhaps an...
Amos 3:6- 8 Does the trumpet sound the alarm in the city without frightening the people? Does disaster come to a city unless the Eternal One has permitted it? The answer to all is the same. No! The eternal Lord does nothing without revealing his plan to his...
Wow! In spite, of it all, God is good! God is great & the foretold days in which we live are truly blessed by the LORD our God—our Father-in-heaven! So here I sit in Fort Davis, Texas, 14-years after the Divine Encounter and journey-to-heaven, looking out the windows upon...
July 2020 has certainly been an unforgettable month. Due to corona virus-19 July 4th parades, firework displays, large gathering for picnics, symphony concerts, and more events were canceled. Beaches were closed . Even the famous Coney Island Hot Dog Festival was reduced to 5 people eating in 2 groups,...
This is a story of how lovingly our needs are met. It’s also about an angel, but mostly about how Spirit, the Guiding Principle, the Universe, God, whatever you choose to call this incomprehensible Mystery, works invisibly to heal our pain. The solutions are not what we’d impose if...
May is a month to celebrate the wonders of Spring. M – many blessings for the spring rains and warm sunshine. A – Abundance of new baby creatures. My back yard has seen new bunnies and squirrels scampering about. Y – Young people excited about riding their new bicycles...
Dear Janine, The coronavirus seems to be the only topic of conversation these days, assuming you can even find someone to have a conversation with . . . as we stand separated by our fears. I write this sitting on the front steps of my little cottage in Massachusetts,...
In 2013, I had the opportunity to tour Ireland with the Knoxville Choral Society. During the trip, we sang in churches in Galway, Sligo, Kilkenny, and Dublin. Ireland truly is a beautiful green wonder!. The Cliffs of Moher are amazing. The people are charming. I particularly enjoyed the Irish...
The accompanying photo is from a correspondent, Pam Urquidi-Wilson, who sees angels in the clouds. On crutches, with painful spinal issues, she lives with a generous, boundless faith in the Holy Spirit, seeing angels everywhere. It’s been a long time since I told a story of angels coming...
A few weeks ago I “pulled a muscle.” You’d think at my age that I would know better than to break up the packed ice on the sidewalk outside my house, and heave the snow over my shoulder to the verge; but it was such a pretty, blue-sky...
Here we are in January. The new year. This time the new Decade. January is the month when we make Resolutions—and usually forget them in a week. Instead of resolutions, I offer myself one word, an Intention, that I can muse on and meander beside throughout the year. One...
Christmas is a time for rejoicing in the birth of Jesus. What glorious music is heard throughout this beautiful season. “Silent Night” is a German hymn that reflects this wonderful gift from God. Silent Night,Holy Night Silent night, holy night, All is calm, all is bright. Round yon virgin...
Christmas is a time of giving. What we don’t always remember is that it’s also a time of receiving, and that receiving is itself a gift. It’s hard to receive. I think it’s sometimes as hard to receive as it is to ask for help. Some people naturally know...
Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday. For one thing, it’s become so commercial, with its orange plastic turkeys and pumpkins, not to mention the tinsel of Christmas that started way back at Hallowe’en, that you can hardly remember to offer thanks. It’s ugly. I want beauty, kindness, thoughtful stillness,...
“Just be yourself. Everyone else is taken!” Oscar Wilde In this day and age where we all have to “become someone” in order to be seen or noticed, I have come to love this quote! Just be me, myself, and I. Yet while this seems simple enough I realize...
“Writing is a form of therapy: sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write, compose or paint can manage to escape the madness, the melancholia, the panic fear which is inherent in a human situation.” Graham Greene October, and again we have the pleasure of frightening ourselves...
Genesis 8:22 (Revised Standard) While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Psalm 104:19 (Revised Standard) Thou hast made the moon to mark the seasons; the sun knows its time for setting. AUTUMN IS HERE! As I write...
“Look, the trees are turning,” she said, glancing out the picture window toward the New Hampshire woods, and everything in me wanted to cry out: Not yet! Too soon! September marks the beginning of the new year. The children are back at school, anxious or excited, happy with their...
By Sophy Burnham ——–While working in the garden, I began to muse on how humans are the only animals (at least that we know of) who can live in both past and future. True an earthworm has a one-second precognitive response before it’s cut in two , and to...
“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled the whole house where they were sitting.” Acts 2:2 NKJ I must confess that I have not always fully given the Holy Spirit the credit and respect I now feel it deserves. ...
There is a saying in the 12-step Alcoholic Anonymous program that “You will not regret the past, nor wish to close the door on it.” And mostly this is true, except when I find myself awake in the darkest hours of a morning night defenseless against the Inner Judge...
Psalm 100: 1-2 (King James) Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness; come before his presence with singing. When I retired from teaching general music at elementary schools, I still had the desire to create music. There had been a...
If you get lost in life, put your ear to the ground and listen to its pounding heart. Old Sami saying As I write this one cold and windy March, I find myself longing for April springtime, with the flowers blooming yellow, pink, and blue against green...
Mark 14: 32 (NIV) They went to a place called Gethsemane, and Jesus said to his disciples, “Sit here while I pray.” He took Peter, James and John along with him, and he began to be distressed and troubled. “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death,”...
The month of March is said to come in like a lion and out like a lamb, and as I write this, longing for lambs and warmth, the temperature with wind-chill here in the mid-Atlantic hovers in the low double digits, expecting yet more snow and the same dreary,...
St. Patrick’s Day is a day of Irish glee! Parades, everything green is worn, time for drinking green beer, turning the Chicago River green, and even eating green Kristy Kreme Donuts. Music of Ireland is exciting, fun, happy, and beautiful. Traditional Irish instruments include the fiddle, tin whistle, bodhran...
A couple of nights ago I had this interesting dream of a couple of hanging pots with beautiful clover (or Shamrocks) trailing over the edge of each pot. The stems of each clover were connected to each other, with several of them being being next to each other. This...
When St. Patrick came back to Ireland as an ordained priest to convert the Irish, he used the local traditions in order to get the people to listen to him. In order to explain the Holy Trinity to the local population he would pick a shamrock to show the...
“It is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey His will, to be grateful for His benefits, and humbly to implore His protection and favor.” George Washington. The painting accompanying this article hangs in my church during the winter months and was...
In dark December, when everyone was talking about harking to angels, and the birth of the Baby and the return of the Light, the Atlantic Monthly published a story about demonic possession. (http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arcive/2018/23/catholic-exorcisms-on-the-rise/573943.) An acquaintance made sure I saw it: “I know you write about angels,” he wrote. “What...
Not long ago a Canadian wrote me about a mysterious encounter he’d had with a homeless man, Helmut, who always carried in his shopping bags spiritual books, herbs, treats and notebooks, and you could imagine that many people thought this ragged man was probably a little crazy. But Helmut...
This is the season for harkening to angel songs, believing—even joyfully—the warmth, comfort, healing and optimism offered by the angels, the sense that everything is goingto be all right, and that with all our doubts, inadequacies and fears we, too, are all right. We are perfect just the way...
It is Thanksgiving week, and I am late with offering my few words before the T-Day feast of gladness that we are called to, because in the last weeks it feels as if all I’ve done is attend memorial services (three in three days; others earlier). Each service took...
Every October, with its falling leaves and brilliant colors, I’m reminded of my father’s death: October 30 the night before Halloween. My mother had died three years earlier, leaving our father, stroke-ridden, in our house. What was curious, whenever I visited Daddy, I could feel my mother in...
How quickly my opinions change. One moment I am sneering at Michael Cohen, the President’s long-time lawyer and fixer, a hired hand whom we see dipping his fingers in the milk of corruption, sipping from a bowl that is growing larger and larger as he sits before it...
Perhaps because of my name and its derivation (philo-sophy: the love of wisdom), I have a special relationship with wisdom. I remember when I was a teenager that my prayer — with heart-yearning anguish — was “To Understand.” “Understand what?” someone might have asked, had I opened the secret...
As the earth swings in its elliptical arc around the sun and approaches the July 4 aphelion, its farthest point from the sun (94.5 million miles), you’d think the earth would be colder than at other times. But because the North Pole tilts toward (or away from) the light...
Last night I watched a second episode of “Proof” on the tv. The plot is about a heart surgeon whose son died from a terminal illness and although she is very focused on science/medicine and the way in which that discipline approaches life and death, the doctor is drawn...
Christmas is often the time when we feel pulled in many directions. There are presents to buy, parties to attend, travel plans to be made. We can be too hard on ourselves and easily get lost in the shuffle and dance. This season, I am determined to focus on...
I have been preparing food for people who need “Food Angels” ( are ill) or those whose life journey has ended and their family needs food. I discovered that I need the process of stirring and smelling and baking and to nurture those whose hearts are sore. It...