In Real Life (a guest post from Sarah Dunning Park)

April 25, 2013 By 14 Comments
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I love that Sarah Dunning Park is here today. Believe it or not, though Sarah is all over the blogging world, I didn't first meet her online. She went to high school with my husband and we met at their ten year reunion. So, you understand, it has been a thrill to rediscover Sarah here in the interwebs and realize we have a shared love for poetry. Today her book of poems is released on Amazon and we are celebrating with a reflection, poem and giveaway. Give her a great big welcome, … [Read more...]

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What I was into: February

February 28, 2013 By 27 Comments

My favorite of the Friday chalkboard quotes: What I Read (or Will be Reading) I finished Leaving Church. It was beautifully written. And while I was moved by the way Barbara Brown Taylor allowed us to experience her exhaustion in her work as a priest and her process of discovering rest and restoration, I was annoyed by the ease with which she let go of the tenets of her Christian faith. She showed me no struggle in the giving up of Jesus-centered theology and the embracing of a more … [Read more...]

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My Chalkboard: Jane Kenyon

February 15, 2013 By 10 Comments
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    I love Jane Kenyon (who died in 1995). She was the first poet I ever connected with. This quote is from a lecture she once gave titled "Everything I Know About Poetry." I believe it's found in a collection of her essays, A Hundred White Daffodils. (But don't hold me to it.) If you like her, I wholeheartedly recommend her Collected Poems, even (especially!) if you're new to poetry. … [Read more...]

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What I’m Into: January (a couple days late)

February 4, 2013 By 5 Comments
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Well, I don't think I should start this post as a resident of San Francisco without acknowledging the heartbreak of last night. *Moment of silence.* (Yes, I'm an Eagles fan but all this living in SF stuff has made me a bit sensitive to the 49er's and our city's sorrow.) My four-year-old actually came home from the Super Bowl party he and his dad attended (without his sick brother and me) and said, "Mom, I almost cried when they didn't win!" Today I'm joining up for the first time with Leigh … [Read more...]

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My Chalkboard: Christine Valters Painter

January 18, 2013 By 2 Comments
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From The Artist's Rule: Nurturing Your Creative Soul with Monastic Wisdom … [Read more...]

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Thankful Tuesday after Thanksgiving

November 27, 2012 By 6 Comments

For a sweet, small Thanksgiving with friends. I love hosting parties with my husband. And I love having people in our home. I’m thankful that we already had relationships here in SF and that we didn’t have to be alone on such a big day. For plane tickets to see our families over Christmas. For Monday night hang outs with The Mister. For how tired I am at 9 o’clock and how that means my day was full of hard work. Hard work is good. Brooksie has started saying sentences. But they … [Read more...]

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Thanksgiving in their words…

November 21, 2012 By 2 Comments
"Country Home" by suziebeezie (Pinterest via Andrea Duffy)

This is a repost from last Thanksgiving. But how can I not post it again?   "It is impossible to give thanks and simultaneously feel fear." -Ann Voskamp, One Thousand Gifts   "[The] dinner party is a true proclamation of the abundance of being--a rebuke to the thrifty little idolatries by which we lose sight of the lavish hand that made us. It is precisely because no one needs soup, fish, meat, salad, cheese, and dessert at one meal that we so badly need to sit down to them from time … [Read more...]

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One Last Moving Day Post

November 1, 2012 By 10 Comments
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We’re moving today. Are you so sick of me saying that? Me too. So, in honor of my mind and tasks being elsewhere, I’m giving you a hodgepodge of things I’m thinking about today:   The best things about eight weeks in two separate temporary homes: August finally getting to experience his dream come true: Stairs in his house! (Too bad that only lasted 4 weeks). Cable! Cable in both temporary homes! Or, as my kid calls it: Live TV Being able to live in the cool … [Read more...]

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A Woman of Valor, who can find? (A review of Rachel Held Evans’ A Year of Biblical Womanhood)

October 29, 2012 By 10 Comments
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A project like A Year of Biblical Womanhood, in which Rachel Held Evans spends a year attempting to follow every specific biblical principle applied to women, could easily have come off as a mockery, one more 300-page joke about how the Bible is backward and legalistic and written by women-hating ancients. Instead Evans invites us into her struggle: her love for scripture and her willingness to work through the parts of the Bible that she isn’t quite sure how to make sense of. This book, … [Read more...]

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The Ministry of Friendship

October 11, 2012 By 13 Comments
Photo courtesy of State Library and Archives of Florida

Saturday morning, Chris took the boys in search of the perfect San Francisco donut and dropped me off at a park so I could run for the first time in four weeks. But first I sat down on a bench and called one of my dearest, a friend I hadn’t caught up in almost the same amount of time I hadn’t been on a run. Our conversation did not go as expected. She’s in an amazing 9-month intensive academy, studying theology and culture. I couldn’t wait to hear what she was reading and … [Read more...]

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