Last summer we headed for the path of totality. It was the middle of August when we set out for Sublimity in the pickup. It 's my favorite season here in Oregon: sunshine, cornflower skies, and fat blueberries, ripe and sweet in the dusty fields. We bought the cardboard glasses. We studied the maps. We gathered the supplies: big kids, hoodies, fraying quilts, chunky homemade Monster cookies, the good camera, and dark-roast coffee. Before the day fully dawned, clear and bright, we piled into the pickup and drove to an open field between farmlands. It felt like a party. Like Continue Reading

Retreat. It should be a refuge and a shelter from the wild places. A place to grow strong again. Women's Retreat. What happens when you hear those words? Do you lean in and sign up immediately? Do you wait for a personal invitation? Do you cringe and hope no one asks if you’re going? Are you already crafting your excuse? Do you remember that left out feeling from the last one years ago when you vowed never to go again? Read on, darling, and let's make going on retreats or trips of any kind worth it again. When I Continue Reading

Acknowledging rest is not a recipe with five easy steps, but a reorientation toward what makes me hungry in the first place. We must rest in order for him to rise within us. Shelly Miller It seems we are all tired, but we have forgotten how to rest, really lay down our burdens. To think of a whole day of rest makes us only think of escaping to a chaise lounge on a sandy shore under a cloudless sky with no responsibility. But is that really all there is to it? Quick. When you hear Sabbath, what is your gut Continue Reading

"My daily routines are transactional. Everything that happens in my day is a transaction between the external world and my internal world. Everything is raw material." Twyla Tharp I stood at the kitchen sink, and felt a slight rise in the last floorboard near the baseboard. I bent down to look. The rise looked bigger from ground level. I opened the cabinet under the sink. All was dry and quiet, no sound of dripping water or any puddles on the floor. I went back to washing dishes. But every time I walked away from the sink and back Continue Reading