Soul Bondages
Things that hold us back, bind us, irk us, trigger us are often what we need freeing from. As the returned Jewish exiles are working hard rebuilding the wall around Jerusalem in 445BC (reestablishing their place and their voice in Nehemiah 4) they encounter opposition that threatens to hold them back, keep them enslaved, trigger […]
Soul Invitation
“You made me bold with strength in my soul.” Psalm 138:3b, NASB As a child I had the mysterious ashes applied to my forehead at the beginning of the Lent season, hearing the haunting “ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” as they were applied. Later as a teen I rejected the practice of […]
Soul Hindsight
Take some time with your soul reflecting on the year 2020 with HINDSIGHT! To download reflection guide click here “Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forward…” —Søren Kierkegaard
Soul Entitlements
Our idea of what well-being for our lives and souls should be is greatly dependent on expectations that spring from our contexts and inner neediness. Weary hours and years can be spent groping for what we think should be due us. If I hold over you a set of unspoken or subconscious expectations that stem […]
Your Life is Re-markable!
It’s been a long journey. How much I still have to learn and how far I still need to go! Check out my book coming this week! A % will go toward our renewable energy project in Central Asia.
Peaks for the Soul
Looking from the window of our apartment, I feast my eyes with layers of the Tien Shan mountains silently singing handiwork, ever new. The first, foothills green with growth, anticipating the morning light; the next layer curiously peering over, dark and withdrawn. The following layer foreboding and fervent in stance with streaks of white hinting […]
Soul Traverse
A Lament for our Times 6/2020 A typical Post-Soviet stairwell – photo courtesy of Rachel Duggins The ins and outs, attics and basements, the sunrooms, porches and junk drawers of our souls…The places we mourn. Where tears are shed, dreams are led, regrets embed into closets and drawers – a potpourri of impressions, leanings, voices […]
Soul members
Those moments in the conversation when you recognize another conversation going on inside you saying, “How do I get to be among such multi-faceted, well-read, broadly studied and stunningly thoughtful people?” Maybe because quarantine has brought out the beauty of what we miss…or the reality of what we forget. We are created to be members […]
Soul Innovation
Noticing a slip into laziness and a lean toward unhealthy withdrawal, I did some self-examination and recognized the danger. I could float and be fine. Is that what I wanted? In some moments – YES. But when I thought more deeply – NO. How could I channel anxious, scattered energy toward an intention that innovates […]
Soul Journey
Paskha (Passover) That’s what the Orthodox Church calls Easter on this side of the world since it is the event that links the first Jewish Passover where the lamb’s blood saved them from death to Jesus our Passover Lamb whose blood saves us from death (1 Corinthians 5:7). (The term “Easter” is a carry-over from […]