I have the right to listen to the ravens, to hear the story being told by all of creation. I have the right to repeat creation’s story, to speak my own language, to keep my eyes open, to judge my intentions, to cherish freedom, to stand against evil, to sit in solitude, to sing in community, to be amazed at…
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Latest from Mining with a Feather
A Quote From C.S. Lewis
“People often think of Christian morality as a kind of bargain in which God says, “if you keep a lot of rules I’ll reward you and if you don’t I’ll do the other thing.” I do not think that is the best way of looking at it. I would much rather say that every time you make a choice your…
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Where Sweetness Laces Every Leaf Edge and Petal.
Standing on the balcony overlooking the El Yunque rain forest, I remember the kitchen pinging with light. My father emerges from nowhere, slams me playfully against the wall. Placing his forearm against my throat, barely pressing because I know enough to freeze, while I plead with him to let me go, he grabs a knife from the silverware drawer. He’s…
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Mother’s Day Prayer by Barbara Lyons
Heavenly Father, Jehovah God, from whom your whole family in heaven and on Earth derives its name, we thank you for motherhood. We thank you for what it reminds us about who you are. We thank you that you understood first the joy of anticipating your perfect family. We thank you that you understood first the pain of losing your…
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A Great Place to Live
Thoughts
Male and female, created He them. The male is given all the apparatus to know a woman…and as he exhibits his knowledge trust is presumed upon her. If she grows cold is it for lack of covering? Or has she chosen winter’s indifferent arms rather than the deep warming thatwould undo and possiblyabandon?
God’s Currency is Relationships
The Image of A Pearl
I woke up this morning with the image of a pearl in my mind: a tiny sphere brought into being by an irritating grain of sand within the house of a muscle… a space where competition between a foreign and a resident thought spar to arrive at something both beautiful and kind. This is an image of instruction for me….
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Regrets
As a young woman you seemed a red flame in a kind white field.Your eyes orbed, magnetic, Gathered me in your wind –blowing blowing blowing through the cracks of me. I, a reed, a chime, a swinging bell. Saved from among tiny begging mouths, I licked the spoon of you believing in the more the more the more. Of course,…
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Giving Up
I’ve had an ongoing internal conversation about Lent prompted by a World Vision Video. I wonder what it means to sacrifice. It seems like the word sacrifice implies a painful relinquishment. In Biblical times sacrifice required the death and burning of a spotless animal, which seems barbaric at best. If the “thing” had lived it would have been a source…
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What C.S. Lewis Said
“She’s the sort of woman who lives for others – you can tell the others by their hunted expression.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
Prayer of an Old Chimney
Oh ignored Carpenter, Over-looked Yahweh, Thank you for givingme what my smoke-filled eyes mistook for loss. For sustaining my conflagrating arrogance until every defining board, every weight-bearing rafter,every imperiled shingle I false-claimed as trophy for gain,smoldered to foddering ash. By the power of your soft-petaled will you forbore my ill-conceived fireand suffered the flames of all my self-victimizing stories. At…
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