I think I was saying something irreverant when my husband quipped, "Watch out, or you will become a 'backslider.'" We both giggled a bit about this. The term has fallen out of vogue lately. I haven't heard it in awhile. But it got me thinking: who came up with this phrase in the first place? […]

I first realized my body was not my own when I was about 15. My swim coach started to weigh me alongside my teammates.  Publicly. Each of us had to stand on the scale in front of each other. Our coach recorded our weights in a little black notebook. We got on the scale prior […]

The great TS Eliot - in his play The Elder Statesman - puts it best: What is this self inside us, this silent observer, Severe and speechless critic, who can terrorize us And urge us on to futile activity And in the end, judge us still more severely For the errors into which his own […]

Here it is - the end of 2020. Last year at this time none of us could have imagined what this year would bring. Truth is, none of us know what lies ahead this year, either. Uncertainty is the nature of life. Rather than leaning into this reality many of us try to reduce uncertainty […]

Sometimes, amidst the holiday hustle and bustle, I feel lonely. Do you? I don't quite know why and maybe that doesn't matter. What matters - I am learning - is that I pay attention to the loneliness, even learn from it. Becoming a student of loneliness demands I sink down into it. That I feel […]

Poetry has been saving my weary soul lately. I have been reading Padraig O Tuama's spiritual memoir, In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World and it is rich with his poems. Here is one that took my breath away this morning. Collect God of watching, whose gaze I doubt and rally against both, […]