I must have been around 6 or 7 when I discovered the humid, over-stuffed playground in my grandparent’s attic on Lone Oak Road in Nashville, Tennessee. My parents were on a trip to Europe, and had left their four daughters with our grandparents. My time in Nashville that summer is…

Imposing on my quiet meditation, a persistent, rogue thought shoves its foot in the door, trying to gain entry. And while I sit, my breath swells pushing the thought upward and upward and upward until it escapes through the roof (for lack of welcome). Not here. Not now. I will…

After decades of looking in all the wrong places I’m sure we’ve all had the notion that everything could be better if we could just get away. A vacation, a break, a “she-shed” or a fishing trip. We wonder, where can we go to find peace? It’ll never work. Peace…

On driving excursions, Aaron tries to accommodate my persistent urges to pull over and let me take a picture. It hits me suddenly, so it’s not always a safe place to stop the car. But I see something, and I don’t want to lose it. …

I got another storage alert from my phone this morning. There is no space left, and my phone will no longer function appropriately. There is no space left. I take photos again and again that swallow space, sitting unused and unappreciated, views that (at least at one time) had soothed…

I love the spaciousness of summer — lazy mornings, quiet afternoons — but somehow, I manage to fill the space with activity. I have a lazy side and I love comfort and pleasure. Because of this, I try to fold-in balance with activities and practices that are filled with the…

I’ve watched for decades the way that people needing to be right, or worse, needing to be righteous, destroy the secure sense of safety necessary within their intimate relationships. The only way to win is not to play. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about defensiveness, looking at ways in…

You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies…(Psalm 23:5) Something about the 23rd psalm conveys a sense of safety all the way through. Safety and provision. If I think back and try to pinpoint what I felt the first time I read this passage consciously as…

The practice of gratitude is radical. I’ve been a bit stuck in a perception of gratitude as listing, literally writing things down in a list that might be in alignment with my preferences. …I’m grateful for apples and the bounty of the harvest. …I’m grateful for beauty, and the way…