An Unexpected Invitation
I had met her the weekend before (Palm Sunday weekend) on a bus trip to visit a monastery in the eastern half of the country. As we parted, getting off the bus at 6:00 am Monday morning, she hugged me and asked, “Do you have plans for Easter?” Easter is the biggest holiday of the […]
A Paradoxical Party
The wind blew through the coconut trees from the west, an indicator that November had arrived. Tiny red and gold flowers lined the muddy trail I walked along. They only bloomed this time of year, almost as if they were in honor of the National Holiday that had dawned with the sunrise. It was still […]
Celebration: A Discipline
When I was doing my undergrad, one of the required courses was Spiritual Formation. The course centered around going through Richard Foster’s book Celebration of Discipline within a small group context and practicing each of the disciplines together with peers. If you’ve read the book (you should!) you know where I am headed with this […]
7 Reasons to Celebrate in All Things
We are often straddling between intertwined threads of joy and struggle. If there is any side we are leaning towards, it’s most likely the one that tries to bring us down. It’s hard to celebrate when our situation doesn’t provide us with any apparent reason to. Remember Moses? Once the Israelites had left Egypt and […]
Even in the Hard…Celebrate
In South Africa, August 9th is celebrated as Women’s Day, commemorating the 1956 march of 20,000 women to the Union Buildings in Pretoria to petition against the implementation of pass laws. These laws required that South Africans defined as “black” carry an internal passport, which further maintained segregation, controlled urbanization, and managed migrant labor during […]
This Month’s Theme: Celebrate
Habakkuk 3:17-18 (CSB) Though the fig tree does not bud and there is no fruit on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though the flocks disappear from the pen and there are no herds in the stalls, yet I will celebrate in the Lord; I will rejoice in […]
Celebrating in the Happiest Place in the World
According to several different polls, I live in one of the world’s happiest places. Where I live, people greet each other in elevators, doctors give you a kiss on the cheek, a meeting stops to welcome the late arriver, and everyone is, well, just plain friendly. That was until COVID-19 arrived. The usual greeting of […]
Starry Eyes and Grape-less Vines
For two years I had looked forward to The Week. The Week was when every member of my immediate family was going to be together under one roof, for the first time in two.whole.years. The Week was when we’d laugh together, make new memories together, and hear about what these past years have held. After […]
No Parties, Please
I’m not a fan of celebrations. Christmas, birthdays, Easter, Thanksgiving, it doesn’t matter what the holiday is, they all feel ridiculous to me and hold a layer of sadness. It could be because of an overseas childhood in a country that did not celebrate western holidays. Or maybe, with all the transitions and moves in […]
This Week’s Theme: Celebrate What He Has Done
When “Yet I Will Celebrate” raised her hand as the theme for the 2020 retreat, we had no idea how much we would need these words, this discipline, this way of life. In the moments when it has felt like the world is falling apart, when you have felt crushed by loneliness and hopelessness, how […]
The Life-Changing Magic of Praying For Salsa
My word for 2016 was SALSA. I know – not exactly a deep, soulful, year-centering word. But for me, it was a relief, a release of emotion from the not-exactly-met hopes of my previous one words “try” and “submit.” It’s not that those years were years of failure, but what I had hoped they’d mean – […]
The Gift that Dwells in Me
The first Christmas overseas, I sobbed—loud, embarrassing heaves, not gentle, wistful tears—and earned myself an awkward consolation pat on the head from a male teammate who wasn’t sure what to make of this small town Alabama girl who couldn’t pull herself together. I was young, sad, and missed home. Fast forward 11 years, and I […]