The Refreshing
It’s a sound I’ve not heard in months – the soothing rhythm of rain beating wildly on my rooftop. Truthfully, I was half-tempted to go outside and dance in the momentary downpour. We are weeks into the rainy season here and the landscape is as parched as many of the people who traverse it. Like […]
Fifteen Minutes Matter
I just needed fifteen minutes to step out of my house and clear my head. Usually, I prefer to view the beauty of my surroundings from my favorite chair with maple syrup sweetened coffee at my lips. But this morning was different. When my alarm went off, I pressed the snooze button but then turned […]
Refresh, Recalibrate
I had to chuckle at the timing of this post. You see, I just hit the tail end of my Master’s program and submitted my thesis last week—all 49,431 words. Prior to pressing “send” I was pretty much brain-dead, bleary-eyed, over-caffeinated, sleep-deprived, and hyper-sensitive. I was full of self-doubt and second guessed every word of […]
This Week’s Theme: Refresh
A cool glass of water, a long stretch of reading with no interruptions, a blast of cold air to fill our lungs. Ahh, refreshment. What is refreshing your heart, your mind, your body? Here at Velvet Ashes we will be taking the entire week of June 28-July 3rd off. This is a rhythm of Sabbath […]
Coming Back to Life
There is so much that must die in us in this life. It starts with a thought, a consideration, perhaps a calling. It starts at an altar, a dinner table, a non-descript plush seat in a sanctuary. It starts with ‘Surely not me, I could not live that life’ or a ‘No thank you, God, […]
My Obsession: Chai Tea
I often thought (and still do sometimes) that I didn’t have an obsession. Some people are obsessed with sports teams, others with Sharpies, and still others with things like selfies (does anyone else out there not have a cell phone capable of this?!). I always thought to myself, “Not me . . . I’m so […]
Passing the Swamp
I had this nagging sense of exhaustion hanging over my head, walking in fog that I couldn’t quite define or explain. A persistent tiredness for which I didn’t have words, a thing I couldn’t sense, like walking with a pebble in my shoe. But finally, it clicked for me while listening to a podcast from […]
M A R G I N {A THINK TANK}
I have this bad habit of wanting to cram too much information on a single page of paper. Whether it’s a marketing graphic or a party invitation or I’m just trying to save paper by fitting everything I want in a one-page Microsoft Word document, I am consistently getting an alert from my printer telling […]