My husband and I are on a two-day trip for the New Year. We will stay in a bed and breakfast tomorrow. Last night we were in a small, off-the-beaten-path, Texas town. We love road trips. With the highway wide open before us, it is fun to hop in the car and just take off…
Category: Faith
To Touch a Life
This German sister, from the Evangelical Sisters of Mary located in Darmstadt, Germany, deeply touched my life this year. I met her at the Toward Jerusalem Council II summit meeting in Germany last fall. There were about 100 people there from around the world to pray for reconcilation between the Church and the Jewish people. On the…
Angels
One of my favorite winterscapes is a sunrise or sunset scarlet sky in the background with lacy, barren branches in overlay. I snapped this photo yesterday at dusk as we were driving to a couple’s house for dinner. There were slate blue clouds mixed in with the pink, and it was so beautiful. In the near-center…
Let There be Peace…
As an elementary-age student, I sang in the school and church choirs and enjoyed it very much. One of the songs we performed almost every holiday season is a classic: “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” That introspective child in me always pondered the words to the tunes we sang, and the lyrics to this song stirred…
The Magnificat
“Fra Angelico” by Florenz (1446) In the last decade, a depth of appreciation has grown in my heart for the historic church. In my youth, I had no regard for the roots of Christianity, and my ignorance about the great heritage of meaningful tradition, often based upon significant biblical truth, left a void in my spirit….
haiku: kindling
just a baby born blessed is the kindling that sparked redemption’s great flame
Delighting in What Remains…
Today is the anniversary of the death of my father-in-law. I am pondering this morning how we felt on this day last year. His death was bitter, but there was sweetness in his expiration from this realm to the next. And there was and is much joy in the knowledge that he is in heaven, and we will…
That Gnawing Emptiness…
Here we are standing thigh-deep in glittering red and green–or in my case, the glittering white of the season. It’s not going away for a couple more weeks–it will only intensive. Love or loathe it, Christmas celebration is part of the cultural life-cycle that spins our immediate world. Lights, sparkle, candles, scents, ribbons, baking, colors–all of…
Plastic Shine
The Candles and lights of Christmas have been the backdrop for most of my special seasonal memories. Those hours spent at home with family–the smells of cinnamon and spice rising from the oven while cookies bake, wrappping gifts with holiday songs filling the house, and finally ripping into those shiny gifts under the tree on…
Mongolian Mountain Climbing in Slippers
It seems I went to Ulaanbaantar, Mongoila, at 3:10 AM in my slippers. No, I wasn’t dreaming or sleep walking… but I was there. And it is interesting since I have talked a lot in my spiritual journey about going to Mongolia. In fact, my husband and I have a joke about being buried in…
Bonnie Saul Wilks 