Category: Speaking to the Soul

Hildegard of Bingen is a saint full of contradictions. Despite being known primarily for her writings, some of which were quite intellectual, Hildegard was all about embodiment in the world of God’s creation.

Underestimating children and their acumen is a fool’s game. In the exhausting days of raising children, I and my friends would sometimes be startled by the wisdom that would come out of our children’s mouths.

“Help me, God, to speak with goodness.”

During the intervening months, we created this garden as a place of gathering, a place of life in the midst of death. Friends donated plants “in honor of their animal companions and, in this strange way of the pandemic, attended Alvie’s memorial there – both in person (outdoors and physically distanced) and via Zoom. Holding the thresholds of death and life in one time and one place that day, we dedicated the garden and also offered a welcoming ritual for our rescue pit bull, Sophie Grace.”

“As my fingers speed across the keyboard, I am awed by the dexterity of these small digits. I look at a stack of my prayer cards and am awed by the continuing creativity with which God blesses me. Wow, wow, wow. So much to be awed by, and I have not mentioned my neighbourhood awe and wonder walk which is once more a part of my daily exercise.”

“I’m pretty sure curiosity about Jesus was one of the main reasons people journeyed, sometimes long distances, to find out who this person was that they had heard about through word of mouth from others.  Perhaps they heard someone quote one of Jesus’s teachings, or maybe it was the recounting of a miracle he had performed that caused them to want to hear and see more.”

“Crummell’s greatest light, though, was that through all these changes, all these moves, all these convolutions in his own life, he remained a lifelong scholar, author, and teacher of moral philosophy in a number of academic posts during his career.  His work in moral philosophy would be the foundation of other great African-American thinkers such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Henry P, Slaughter.  He was able to stake a moral foundation for the equality of all races despite all the barriers slavery and Jim Crow threw at him.”

“Because who we say HE is is also who we say we are if we are to bear his name in truth.”

“Show your children that time with pen, paper, and books is never wasted.”