Companioning Center Blog

Practicing Sacred Pause

On any given morning, I can usually be found in the driver’s seat of my car. Most often, I’m transporting my teenage daughter to school. Our daily drive is filled with chatter that’s almost entirely practical. Typically, it begins with me asking about assignments and tests. Then the conversation moves on to whether my daughter remembered to pack her lunch. And whether that lunch contains anything nourishing whatsoever.

God's Presence

Beauty

Nature

Spiritual Practices

An Invitation to Notice

These emerging summer days draw my soul toward the wide, open expanses of the outdoors and awaken cherished memories of summers past. One particular memory lingers. In one of my seminary classes, our professor invited us to spend time in a place where we were invisible.

Discernment

Community

Rest

Say When

My husband was uncomfortably full, to put it mildly. Having traveled to Europe for work, he found himself in a large German church on his first Sunday morning. Following their service, he was invited to stay for a feast of a fellowship meal. Knowing he’d face a four-hour journey into France later that day, my husband ate his fill. What he didn’t know at that time was that his host family, awaiting his arrival in France, had spent that very same day in their kitchen, diligently preparing a traditional seven-course meal to welcome him.

Consolation/Desolation

Deconstruction

Emotions

Faith

The Thread

In The Princess and the Goblin, George MacDonald weaves the tale of a sweet young princess named Irene who discovers her great-great-grandmother residing in a hidden room in the recesses of their castle. The tale is full of drama and dangers, but in every situation, Princess Irene’s grandmother is present to calm, comfort, and rescue.

Spiritual Practices

Embodiment

Rest

Rest is For Me

Macrina Wiederkehr writes, “I have learned that way down underneath all the busyness, something (or is it Someone) waits for us to come home to who we truly are.” It sounds good to come home to who I truly am, a beloved child of God. I long for it, and yet there are times when I resist this movement from distracted activity to spacious pause, because it means that I will come face to face with my own questions and doubts. Pause is the breeding ground for my shadows and insecurities to emerge, unaccustomed to the light.

An Invitation to Desire

A gift of a desire for a dog leads to a recognition of belovedness in a relationship with God.

The Invisible Threads Between Us (And How We Tug Them Every Day)

The other night, I had one of those mental jackpot moments. You know, those times when, all of a sudden, several things line up in your brain, and you’re like, “Aha! I get it!” Humanity is like a tapestry, in that there are threads connecting us one to another. Which means our words and deeds cannot help but affect others. Consciously and unconsciously, we’re constantly tugging on the invisible strands tying us together.

God's Presence

Faith

Spiritual Practices

Of Holding Faith and Welcoming Mystery

One of the great illuminating authors of our time, John O’Donohue, writes in Anam Cara, “It is strange to be here. The mystery never leaves you alone.” These words have ruminated in my heart since reading them many years ago. I have had to wrestle with the incongruency of certainty, human experience and my faith journey. Mystery can be both comforting and unsettling. It seems far easier to dance with certainty than with mystery.

Forgiveness as an Act of Self-Care

It was my first time as a volunteer in the women’s prison. As I scanned the room, getting my bearings of what exactly I had signed up for with the prison ministry team, I noticed a woman who radiated something I couldn’t quite explain. There was a lightness about her. A steadiness. A kind of quiet joy that felt almost out of place in that environment. I found myself drawn to her and eventually asked about her story What I learned stopped me.

Mutuality with God

If anything pleases [God], it is the exaltation of the [human] soul. Since there is no way by which he can exalt her more than by making her equal to himself, he is pleased only with her love. For the property of love is to make the lover equal to the object loved. —John of the Cross What a provocative quote! Is John of the Cross really saying what I think he’s saying? What does he mean when he insinuates that it pleases God to make the human soul “equal to himself”?

Companioning Center Blog

Practicing Sacred Pause

An Invitation to Notice

Say When

The Thread

Rest is For Me

An Invitation to Desire

The Invisible Threads Between Us (And How We Tug Them Every Day)

Of Holding Faith and Welcoming Mystery

Forgiveness as an Act of Self-Care

Mutuality with God

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