Tag: Wisdom
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The Curious Art of Listening
Imagine what the world would be like if we became curious about each other. If curiosity became our first reflex instead of judgement. Maybe we’d become harder to manipulate, too. It’s much easier to convince people to hate one another when nobody actually knows one another. Listening wouldn’t solve everything. Some ideas cause real harm…
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Leave The Screen Door Open
Don’t forget to find some kind of joy. I think we were created to find it as often as we possibly can. Why else would these bodies of ours come built with their own little reward system for it? Maybe joy isn’t something frivolous we’re supposed to earn after all the important work is done.…
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The Pattern We Keep Forgetting
A Letter About Wholeness Pull up a chair for a minute. I’ve been carrying an idea around for a long time now, and every time I think I’ve reached the edge of it, life hands me another thread. Maybe you’ll think I’ve wandered too far into the woods. Maybe you’ll recognize something you’ve been noticing…
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Fly Your Rage Flags
I tried to end my life when I was nine years old. I’m not even sure I knew that’s what I was trying to do. I took half a bottle of aspirin. The aspirin sat on a high shelf in the pantry. It was what we took for pain. I had pain. So, in my…
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Hospice: Humanity In It’s Houseshoes
Hospice workers do not meet people in polished moments. They meet them where life has spilled out onto the floor a little.Some folks think hospice workers spend their days around death.But honestly?We spend most our days around humanity in its house shoes.Not polished humanity. Not church-clothes humanity. Not Facebook-profile humanity.House shoes humanity.The kind with gravy…
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The Difficult Garden
Some folks are easy to love.Some arrive into a room soft as worn quilts and fresh bread, and compassion rises up naturally as birdsong.And then there are the others.The sharp-edged ones. The opinionated ones. The ones who say things that make your spirit flinch. The ones carrying whole generations of fear, pride, prejudice, loneliness, religion,…
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A Porch Is Rebellion Against Frantic Living
Not because nothing happens there. Lord no. Porches have held more life than most city streets ever will. Babies rocked to sleep there. Beans snapped into bowls. Stories stretched long past dark. Grief sat quietly in rocking chairs while somebody brought sweet tea without asking. Storms rolled over mountains while old folks watched the sky…
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Sometimes A Granny Gotta Preach
Bel, the Dragon, and a chapter of Daniel that got left out. There is a story most Protestant Christians were never taught… Daniel 14. It’s called Bel and the Dragon, and it was once included as part of the book of Daniel in ancient Scripture. Catholics and Orthodox Christians still keep it. But for many…
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Power or Reverence
There’s a thing about holding power, and most folks don’t talk about it plain. Not because they don’t feel it.But because they’ve been taught to look for it in the wrong places. They think power lives in politics, in boardrooms, in pulpits, in wealth, in titles stitched on a name badge or printed on a…
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The Dandelion Lesson
Some nights the world feels like it’s coming apart at the seams.You turn on the news or scroll through the glowing box in your hand and it’s all the same story told a thousand ways: power grabbing, men shouting, systems grinding like tired gears that forgot what they were built to do in the first…
Granny Woman 