Photo by Gary Spears on Pexels.com "let every heart prepare him room"Isaac Watts, "Joy to the World" It's two weeks until Christmas, and despite all of my best-intentioned preparation plans, I've crossed off very few items on my list of things to do. I suspect I'm not alone in this mid-December Saturday morning realization. The…
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Preparing Room
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Memories of the week when everything changed
A birthday gift from November 2001, picture taken at the World Trade Center memorial in NYC days after 9/11. 20 years ago today, I was attending a conference held on the Genentech campus in South San Francisco, California. We were split up into working teams and I was sitting next to a woman I'd just…
Continue reading ➞ Memories of the week when everything changed
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Can’t we just go back to the way it was before?
Photo by Amina Filkins on Pexels.com When I was younger, my mom had a subscription to Ladies Home Journal, among a few other magazines. One of my favorite columns to read, even as a young girl, was "Can This Marriage Be Saved?" The column would start with a recap of a situation, then the wife…
Continue reading ➞ Can’t we just go back to the way it was before?
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Garbage in, Garbage out
Image by Thomas Ulrich from Pixabay Like many of you probably do each year, toward the end of last year I made a promise to myself to get a fresh start in 2021 and try to concentrate on what's working and why, what isn't working so well and why, and what I want to do…
Literal Hyberbole
Sometimes you feel like your head might explode Watching the news these days, when I get past the anger and profound sadness at what I see and hear on a daily basis, all that comes to mind is this scene with the incomparable Viola Davis from the movie "The Help;" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97a8a22eyvg Something has happened in…
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Saudade
When I was researching and preparing for our trip to Portugal last year, the word saudade kept coming up. Saudade:a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one cares for and/or loves. Moreover, it often carries a repressed knowledge that the object of longing might never…
(Dis)comfort and Joy
Joy is a decision, a really brave one, about how you are going to respond to life.Wess Stafford If you've been following along with my relatively new blog project, you might have noticed that I haven't had a post in a few weeks. Thank you for noticing! The truth is, I haven't been without anything…
Appreciation through deprivation
Photo by Vie Studio on Pexels.com I think it is interesting how our perceptions and definitions of words change with circumstances and surroundings. Let's take the word "essential." Wouldn't it be interesting, if it were possible, to compare what people would have listed as "essential" to them on January 1 to a list they made…
False Choices
Photo by Designecologist on Pexels.com "Which member of your family are you ok to lose?" "Are you more worried about the economy or my health?" "Don't be so selfish. This virus is going to kill millions. What's another couple of months of lockdown?" The saddest and most frustrating thing to me during this disaster -…
Holding the paradox
Imagine the wonder, the fear, the bewilderment and finally, the joy that Jesus' mother, Mary, must have felt when news came to her that her son's tomb was empty, that the burial cloths had been wrapped and placed in a corner and his body was nowhere to be found! It's hard not to think about…
Trusting and Waiting
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com As I mentioned yesterday, this is such a strange Easter Season. While I'd love it dearly if I could be with my mom and other family members, and while I certainly wish I were preparing an epic meal for Easter like I normally try to do, it's not possible this…
Red Chair Reflections 