Increasing our consciousness, our awareness is a theme of Advent. I feel as if I’ve been in Advent for months, waiting and watching for new ways God is coming into the world around me, maybe even today. Clearing space for something new to happen. I’ve been clearing literal space in my home in recent months.

If we believe love is only a feeling, we won't stand a chance of learning to love our enemies. Awareness is a large part of the process.

If we claim we have no enemies, we give ourselves a pass on the hard work of loving them.

Love is what connects everyone and everything at the deepest levels.

I love watching spring unfold every year. The cyclic compact of return, of the normalcy declared by each one being and doing what it was created to be and do brings me hope. We’ve needed something that feels normal and hopeful.

The day my daughter Julia turned three months old, she found her fingers, and two of them took up residence in her mouth. Since she had cried non-stop for those three months, I loved those fingers even as they flung food when she pulled them out to take another bite and put them right back in.

When we have strong feelings like fear or anger or grief or when we are in some kind of pain, it is hard to be kind or patient or to respond to others caringly. As Richard Rohr often says, if we don’t heal and transform our pain and suffering, we will transmit it to others.

I’ve been picking up a sense of fear from people (many who wouldn’t admit to it) off and on for months—regardless how they planned to vote. I was out walking a few days before the election with my mind jumping all over the map when I suddenly heard...

“Sing and rejoice, you children of the Day and of the Light. For the Lord is at work in this thick night of darkness that may be felt.” So George Fox began a letter of encouragement to Quakers being persecuted for their faith in England in 1663.

“Who backs Goliath?” The question kept coming back from time to time as I drove. Knowing the popular Bible story of David and Goliath where God, once again, raises up the most unlikely person to be a champion of Israel...