I spent last Saturday at the National Cathedral in Washington, DC, helping make a new bishop. I can say that I was actually helping because I was part of a group of people who surrounded my friend to officially present her at the start of the liturgy. Projecting (as
Thursday of this week, Sept. 14, was Holy Cross Day. One of the most important parts of my recent sabbatical was making a pilgrimage to visit crosses that were important in the story of my family in our ancestral homeland of Scotland. It
Recently, a paperback copy of The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen showed up in the little library at our house, and I decided to give it a read. It’s the story of a trek into the mountains of Nepal with the field biologist George Shaller after Matthiessen lost his wife to cancer. Shaller
For reasons that no amount of therapists, counselors, or doctors have successfully rid me of (so far), I have had an irrational fear of flying since I was twelve years old. It has not stopped me from traveling extensively with my husband who never heard of a place or country he didn’t want to visit,
In May, the Surgeon General of the United States issued a warning about an epidemic, not of a new strain of COVID or some other infectious disease, but of loneliness. You may not have read the bulletin from the Department of Health and Human Services, but you might have noticed an uptick this
In the thirteenth chapter of Matthew’s gospel, Jesus flings out parables like a sower flinging seed across a field:
“The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in a field…The kingdom of God is like yeast that a woman took and mixed with flour…The kingdom of God is like a
Forty-nine years ago on July 29, 1974, eleven women were ordained to the priesthood in the Episcopal Church. There are eleven particular stories to tell about these women and more stories to tell about the three bishops who chose to lay hands on their heads and bring them into the priesthood.
With all due respect to Oscar Wilde who smugly opined, ‘conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative,’ let’s talk about the weather we’ve been having lately: Not just the insufferable heat and humidity in Memphis, but also the bizarre weather that has befallen the coast of Maine where I have been
Dwell is one of my favorite words. It sounds a little old-fashioned, or maybe like a word from a fairy tale, conjuring a hidden home in the woods. In the Bible, it’s repeated all the way through from dwelling in tents to sparrows dwelling near the altar to Christ dwelling in the world
Do you know about the Merlin app? If not, I have a wonderful tip for you. Merlin is a free global bird guide for birds in the US, Canada, and Europe, the perfect companion for summer travels as well as staycations. I learned about it this spring from my friend Barbara, a seasoned naturalist.