February has a special connection to our hearts. There is Valentine’s Day and Heart Month. We share our love with family and friends on this very special day each year. One more way to share our love with others is to keep a healthy heart. There is research that...
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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...
2021 is going to be a year of great anticipation, new beginnings, hope, and promises. A time to look forward to jobs returning, multiple family gatherings, lots of hugs, eating inside a restaurant, travel, and music of all genres. A world becoming Covid-19 virus free with the much needed...
December is a month of anticipation. Taking time to light Advent candles brings quiet reflection. The word Advent means arrival. The advent wreath is a circle representing unending love of Christ and eternal life. Each candle gives us a special meaning throughout each week of December. The First candle...
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...
This 2020 Thanksgiving will certainly be different. The possibility of sharing a Thanksgiving meal with your family or friends may not happen or be very limited. Since March, America has taken one day at a time; trying to understand the Covid-19 virus, a presidential election, riots, hurricanes, fires, jobs...
This Autumn has been particularly beautiful. I have taken some lovely drives through the Great Smoky Mountains and surrounding state forests and seen God’s painted wonders. The days have been filled with amazing blue skies and warm temperatures. Just the right time for gentle walks through the local parks...
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...
I was recently watching a television series and one of the episodes was about the July 20, 1969 moon landing. Millions of people were glued to their television as Neal Armstrong stepped down upon the moon surface and said” That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for...
This has been an unusual summer. Covid-19 has kept us at home with family and many pets. I have spent each day looking out at my backyard watching birds, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, neighborhood cats, and an occasional skunk bring me pleasure each day. Cardinals mate for life. It is...
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, 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...
Spring brings us signs of new beginnings, new hope. This Spring of 2020 has certainly been a time for renewing our faith, hope, and love in God. There have been many challenges that no one ever expected. Quarantine, isolation, social distancing, schools closed for the rest of the school...
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...
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...
February is the month to celebrate Black History Month, Valentine’s Day, and President’s Day. Valentine’s Day is time to exchange loving gifts, cards, and phone calls with family and friends. In I John 4:16 (KJV) the Bible states “God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in...
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...
This picture reminds me of a song I use to teach to kindergarten children, You may remember it. Five fat turkeys are we. We sat all night in a tree. When the cook came around we couldn’t be found, So that’s why we’re here you see! This was such...
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...
Autumn surprises us with glorious, amazing sunsets. God has given us the pleasure of seeing these beautiful sunsets with the joy of knowing a new day is coming. Autumn will soon turn into the cold days of winter. Still, the anticipation of cold frosty mornings with winter blue skies...
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...
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...
God gives us time to reminisce and enjoy the simple things in life. He wants us to share our joy and love with others in happy pleasures. Blowing bubbles is fun at any age. As my grandchildren have grown, I fondly remember teaching them to blow bubbles. There were...
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...
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...
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,”...
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...
Psalm 150: 3-6 (NIV) Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet, praise him with the harp and lyre, praise him with timbrel and dancing, praise him with the strings and pipe, praise him with the clash of cymbals, praise him with resounding cymbals. Let everything that has breath...
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...
Winter comes with gloomy, cold, rainy, snowy days. A fireplace for centuries was used to provide heat and cook food to castles, cabins, and homes. A place to gather for warmth, family time, peace, and security. In the 21st century a fireplace seems to be more for visual enjoyment....
Music is a beloved part of the Christmas season. From the Messiah’s Hallelujah” chorus to Burl Ives singing “A Holly Jolly Christmas” music brings precious memories. As I was shopping at the mall, I heard people humming along to the Christmas music. with smiles on their faces. Christmas parties...
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...
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...
What does it mean to be a person of faith? Martin Luther, one of the movers and shakers in the Protestant Reformation, thought that it meant to be a theodidacta, a “person taught by God.” I like this definition. It suggests that faith is a gift from God that...
The last couple of weeks I have been struggling with remembering the Sovereignty of God. Thus speaks the ego of one who loves to be “in control.” One Sunday I came across much comfort in the book of Colossians. I began to realize that life is truly all...
As I reflect upon the earth, I think of all the amazing photographs from space. What spectacular sights the astronauts have seen. From John Glenn first orbiting the earth; Neil Armstrong, landing on the moon with the famous quote, “One small step for man, One giant leap for mankind.” and Scott...
“O Supreme Spirit of Creation, from Your sacred breath came forth birds and beasts, fish and fowl, creatures of such variety and beauty that we are continuously amazed at Your divine imagination. These children of Yours have been blessed by You, their Creator, with simplicity, beauty and a cosmic...
A More Personal Side to Estate Planning Estate planning is a topic that conjures thoughts of spacious estates, jewelry, taxes and other financial matters. Yet, estate planning is really about our loved ones and providing for them in the event of our death or disability. When viewed in that...
“Celebrate God all day, every day.” Philippians 4:4 (The Message) July 4th is one of my very favorite holidays. I like everything about the day…decorating with red/white/blue, having a picnic with family and friends, fireworks, flags fluttering in the summer breeze, parades, and celebrating the birthday of this wonderful...
Veterans Leadership Ministry: Helping Veterans Re-establish Social Connections to Loved Ones Like many others I had a scar or two from Vietnam and the 4th ID. I did not know what some of that baggage was called until November 2014 in Sarasota, FL when I attended a Moral Injury...
A few months ago, high school senior Samantha made a huge, selfless decision: she decided to join the US Navy as soon as she graduated high school. Before she left for her first of many months of training and service at the beginning of this summer, I sat down...