Have you ever gone through a time of loss and disorientation? Sometimes these are necessary for spiritual growth. Theologian Walter Brueggemann divides the Psalms into three categories: psalms of orientation, disorientation and re-orientation. This week’s psalm, Psalm 79, is a psalm of disorientation. Psalm 79 Psalm 79 is a communal lament. The temple has been […]
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Happy birthday to me! It’s my birthday. You reach a certain age and giving gifts becomes more important than receiving them. What can you give someone who has everything? I plan to celebrate my birthday by taking two of my grandsons to see Toy Story 4 then out for a treat. However, there is something […]
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“Those who don’t learn from history, are doomed to repeat it.” (George Santayana) And sometimes, even when we know our history, we repeat it! Psalm 78 is a loose accounting of the history of the Hebrew nation up to the time of David. It is a story we continue to repeat; a history of our […]
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Diversity is a current buzz word in publishing. Publishers want books with diverse characters. In 2013, when I thought about writing the first book in my Dancing Through Life Series, Dancing on a High Wire, I envisioned the character of Esther being black and thereby providing diversity. However, following the adage, “write what you know,” […]
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After my first third world experience, I believed in God, but questioned God’s goodness. How could a good God allow so much suffering? When I worked on my dissertation and interviewed adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, I questioned God again. How could God allow innocent children to suffer so? It wasn’t the doubt of […]
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We here in the America are so blessed. We have so many freedoms. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to choose who we marry and where we live. Often we take these freedoms for granted. As does Letty in Freedom Dance, the latest novel in the Dancing through Life Series. We forget the price […]
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We see God as we are, not as God is. Hence, the image of a warrior God, as found in Psalm 76. Psalm 76 Psalm 76 extols the power of a conquering God. It is harsh and unrelenting. God is “glorious and terrible” – two translations of the same Hebrew word. “Glorious are you, more […]
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My experience with the Enneagram has changed greatly over the past forty years. My first experience with the Enneagram was almost forty years ago, in the fall of 1979. At the time I was a candidate with the Adrian Dominican Sisters (what was formerly called a postulant). I always liked learning so when the opportunity […]
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If it can be celebrated, it must be celebrated! At least that’s my thinking. I’m halfway through the book of Psalms. Once Psalm 75 is done I’ll have only seventy-five to go! That’s a reason for celebrating. A Cup of Spiced Wine Time to raise a glass of wine. “For in the hand of the […]
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Where was God when the Twin Towers fell? When the tsunami swept away thousands of lives in Indonesia? When the woman was brutally raped and murdered? The child abused? Christians beheaded by ISIS? Where was God? Psalm 74 is a lament of the community that asks this question. Where was God when the Temple was […]
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