Spiritual journey

Song of the Galahs

I walked the streets of my dusty, middle-of-nowhere town buried in the heart and heat of Australia. For a year and a half, Alice Springs cradled my adolescence. Her far-flung small town ethos taught me lessons to savor for a lifetime –concern for neighbor, freedom from pretense. Aboriginal songs in the surrounding buttes carved a…Read more Song of the Galahs

Ready to Blaze

I crawl out from 2014 feeling a bit battered. Nothing catastrophic. Just the grinding and grating of a persistent challenge that prowls and growls at my heels. At the same time, I grasp for 2015 like a new pair of wings. White and light, bright with hope.  As I reach, I lift up my battered-ness…Read more Ready to Blaze

Lunge for the Light

For the days when leaning for the light is not enough, LUNGE for the light. And even if you fall on the path in the dead of night, surely as the sun rises, its tender rays will find you again.

Digging

Here am I again, where circles end, the dusty place I know at the end of the road. I sink to my knees, furiously dig, past listless grains to deeper pack. Sand, flowing through my fingers, until I hit something hard, solid. I grasp it, wrench it into the light, hold it up to weak,…Read more Digging

Sifted Into Gold

Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denial Luke 22:31-32 “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.” Peter Denies Jesus Luke 22:59-62 Then about an hour later still another…Read more Sifted Into Gold

Rooted in Light

The road from courage and hope, to utter despair, and then finally to exhilaration stretched through wild lands in 2005. With the daughter we longed to adopt buried in a third-world orphanage and silence from the Kenyan lawyer who should be inviting us to come and claim her, I could no longer bear the separation.…Read more Rooted in Light

Prophetic Art

“Art is the language of the soul.” With these words, one of my lifelong friends exhorted me as I wrestled for years with an insatiable need to express myself visually. For decades I tried to suppress this language, feeling it could not urgently or adequately address the evils I witnessed in the world. It felt…Read more Prophetic Art

Just to Touch the Hem

Nairobi, June 2005 She refused to eat. Her forehead felt warm. She cried incessantly. Nothing alleviated her discomfort. As a sojourning foreigner, I lacked even the name of a pediatrician in Kenya, much less contact information. Even if I knew who to call, I couldn’t easily access transport. My one solace – I knew that…Read more Just to Touch the Hem

Redemptive Art

I wandered for many years, searching for the space where art, social justice, and faith interweave. For decades, I felt that art and social justice were separate compartments of my life; and I could not find overlap. I painted here and there, but focused the bulk of my energy on the urgent social justice issue of…Read more Redemptive Art

Silence

There was a time in my life when I was stunned into silence. I unexpectedly received news of harm done to someone I love, two days later met the person who caused the harm face-to-face, and then several days after that received medical confirmation for my loved one of resulting lifelong disability. It was too much,…Read more Silence