Begin the New Year with Me!

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Join me for my very first Zoom class, “Beauty and Process Theology,” sponsored by the Cobb Institute. This will be my first class taught on Zoom, and I’m pretty excited about it! I hope to make a lot of new friends who are as passionate about beauty as I am. After each presentation, we will have time to discuss and ponder the many ways beauty can transform our new year, our lives, our relationships, and our planet. This course offers you a unique look at “process theology through the eyes of beauty.” Save your Thursday afternoons in January–or watch at a different time. All the information you need is here: Beauty & Process Theology | Cobb Institute

Only a week away! Hope to see you there. 🙂

Beauty & Process Theology | Cobb Institute

“L” is for Listening (Spiritual Alphabet)

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“All things in the universe want to be heard.”

— Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, Spiritual Literacy

Listening may be the key to unlocking the doors that separate us, to gaining wisdom, to communing with birdsong, and finding intense joy in music — but make no mistake: listening is hard work. I preach sermons every Sunday, and I am well aware that if I go over twelve minutes, no matter how scintillatingly or profound I imagine my words to be, my flock will (if still awake) become restless and dreamy, some playing with lunch possibilities or recipes in their heads. How do I know this? Because when I am in the pew, that’s exactly what I do — food taking up an excessive amount of space in my head. . . (more)

When Fear Hurts

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In Alan Gordon’s new book, The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain, he speaks of “catching your fears” as part of his therapy. Gordon demonstrates through neuroscience, case studies, and storytelling that fear plays a huge role in most chronic pain. Fear can create pain, he says. Learning how to be aware of our fears, observing them, and “catching” them before they get too cozy inside us may be the very image many of us need, chronic pain or not. . . . (more)

Return to the Body

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The first step on a spiritual path today is a return to a sense of one’s own body.
— Martha Heyneman

My Body/Your Body

Age is like a prankster. I wake up with a weird pain in my big toe. Later, I bend over easily in my flower garden to pull weeds, but it takes an eternity to straighten up again. In the evening, on my way to bed, I lose my balance and trip over my cat who runs zigzag in front of my feet and end up in the ER with a broken wrist. Despite all my education in aging, a part of me screams at my body: You’ve got to be kidding me! This isn’t the “me” I recognize; this is my mother! Now, I have to give over enormous amounts of time and effort to take care of you — stretching, exercise, salad spinning — when before you just seemed to go along for the ride. I can’t ignore you anymore!

One thing I have learned as a mind-oriented woman growing old fast is that I can’t disregard the body as a second-class citizen. . . . read more

The Open-Ended House

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Open-ended: That’s how I describe the home where my husband and I now live. Since we purchased our well-worn (shabby-sans-chic) historic house 3 years ago, we have been renovating and restoring. For us, it’s a matter of DIY (do it yourself) on a shoestring budget.

Despite our busy lives, we’ve managed to restore a great deal—with a lot of help from our friends. But nothing is finished; nothing is ever finished. If you’ve ever tried to restore an old home, you know what I mean. Just when you think you can breathe that long-awaited sigh, your eyes follow the wall up to an unsightly gap in the old trim. You decide to cover a radiator and it leads to the need for seat cushions which leads to the need for matching that material to the kitchen chairs which leads to recovering the chairs which leads to reorienting the budget which leads to rethinking the bathroom project entirely, ad infinitum. As Margo Kaufman says, “Remodeling is like pulling a loose thread on a cheap sweater — the job keeps unraveling.” . . . . more