It is no wonder that we are all just a little bit on the wonky side of “keep on, keepin’ on” which is an expression sweet Miss Lillian used to say about being 100. In other words, it was totally beyond her understanding as to why she was still...
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I was talking with a friend the other day, who had inadvertently hurt me. (Hurts are usually inadvertent: Who would choose a friend who would deliberately hurt you?) He said, “I don’t take responsibility for hurting you. If your hurt button got pushed, it has nothing to do with...
I’d like to talk with you about energy and equity. You might be lucky enough to not think twice about paying your electricity bill every month. But low-income families in the U.S. can spend up to half of their incomes on household energy! This energy burden/energy poverty means that...
For a whole year and a half, I have tried to attract birds to my garden. I put up a birdbath, and grieved when no bird came to drink. I put up a bird feeder, and watched the squirrels hang upside down, feeding at leisure on what had promised...
I don’t know where it came from or how old it is; it has just “always been.”. “It” is a wooden wash stick that belonged to my mother and now belongs to me. You can tell from the photo how old and worn it is, As far back as...
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...
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...
For many years (40? 50?) no holiday celebration in our family has been complete without the family favorite: Polish Baked Mushrooms. (see below) Not only is it rich with eggs and heavy cream and butter (and everything’s good with butter and cream), but filled with protein and fat. You’d...
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...
Today I saw a fox pattering along the edge of the forest, nose down, intent on its journey to catch mice in the horse pasture a quarter mile up the road. The birds are twittering, a single crow cawing, and, high above, a vulture sways on the wind looking...
Sixteen years ago I prayed to God to bring me a Relationship, the companion of my heart. I was lonely. I wanted a man to share my life. I thought a man would heal the ache in my soul. Instead I got a horse. A horse? I...
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...
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...
Where there is charity and wisdom, there is neither fear nor ignorance. Where there is patience and humility, there is neither anger nor vexation. Where there is poverty and joy, there is neither greed nor avarice. Where there is peace and meditation, there is neither anxiety nor doubt. St....
Dear Janine, If there is one benefit to this coronavirus isolation, it’s giving us the luxury of time. It’s not boring. To quote Cicero, “ If you have a garden and a library, you have everything.” But when, like me, you live alone, the hours are long, especially on...
In December 1982, a Mel Gibson film entitled “The Year of Living Dangerously “was released. We are only a few months into a new year but I have already dubbed 2020 with the same title as The Year of Living Differently. For me, the difference began 17 days into...
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,...
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...
Dews and falling snow, bless the Lord; Sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever. Ice and cold, bless the Lord; Sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever. Frosts and snows, bless the Lord; Sing praise to him and highly exalt him forever. Isabel Andrews. Simple...
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 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...
I come from a long line of “believers” (in Jesus Christ), and for all of those people who shared their faith stories with me, I am eternally grateful! I was christened in my grandmother’s christening gown when I was six weeks old at the First Methodist Church in Andalusia,...
“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...
“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...
My faith journey began on Great Grandmother’s farm in the Hemet Valley of southern California. The Valley lay at the base of the San Jacinto Mountains which seemed a three or four minute walk to the left down Meridian Street which fronted the property but in truth lay some...
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...
Summertime, and the living is easy. Our cultural memories are rich with summertime: the slap of a screen door to the excited calls of children; of dozing in a hammock over a good book or casting a fishing line onto the black river; of days on the beach, ice...
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...
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...
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,...
1 onion, chopped 1 T. butter 3 (14 oz. cans) chicken broth 1 (32 oz.) frozen hash browns (diced, not shredded) 1 (10 oz. can) Cream of Celery soup 1 (10 oz. can) Cream of Chicken soup 1 1/2 cups milk 1 lb. Velveeta cheese Bacon bits (optional)...
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...
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...
Ingredients: 1 Cup of sugar 1/4 Cup flour 1/8 tsp. nutmeg 1/2 Cup butter (1 stick) 1 recipe for plain pastry or 2 Pillsbury Pie Crusts (1 pkg.) 4 large fresh peeled peaches (when in season) 1/4 Cup water Mix sugar, flour, nutmeg. Cut in butter until “crumbly”. Sprinkle...
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...
2 pkg. Frozen chopped spinach 1 large pkg. Cream cheese (8 oz.) 1 stick of margarine, divided in half grated rind of one lemon Pepperidge Farm dressing crumbs (herb seasoned) Blend cream cheese, ¼ stick of margarine and lemon rind. Cook spinach according to directions. Drain well. Squeeze out...
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...
This is an all-time family favorite! Just use a deep dish pyrex or other oven-safe pie plate. 1 pie dish (or aluminum pie pan) Pie Crust (from Pillsbury’s “All-ready Pie Crust”) 2 heaping tablespoons flour 1 pkg.(2 or 3 cups) Of grated, mixed cheese (colby-jack, or 4-cheese Mexican Blend...
The gemstone for September is sapphire, who knows why? (For that matter who made up the order of any of the 12 monthly gemstones, or put another way—to whose financial benefit? ) Well, I’m not even going to go there. I want to talk about the color blue and...
I know that it is September when the leaves begin to turn brown, or I find them in little fluffy mounds all along the ground near the creek. The spiders are still out in force with cobwebs that festoon our back porch and other insects are still sneaking into...