Espy’s hope grows!

Espy’s, our resident symbol of hope, continues to be in our face with her cheerful optimism…she has once again almost doubled in size…she’s over 22 cm now…growing more than a centimetre and a half per day.  When folks see her after being out of the office for a couple of days, there is a visible …

The balance bar

Permeable and porous…not wide open, nor shut tight. Sigh… …so not easy. I wrote recently of the challenges and the richness of “both/and” living…embracing the joys and sorrows of life simultaneously. It’s easier to be “either/or”…a Pollyanna or an Eeyore…but being stuck in one posture leaves little flexilibility to be both joyful and authentic, to …

Condemnation does not liberate

Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses. I’ve had a few conversations lately with people who want to be closer to a spouse, and so they complain bitterly to them about how they aren’t home enough and no surprise, they aren’t home more after that want a teenage child to be less obnoxious and disrespectful, and …

Dancing with a limp today

Today the skies are cloudy and grey…and for me, it is fitting. This is the day of visiting the grave, and remembering what might have been. An annual day of sadness that is as much a part of my life as Christmas and birthdays. Some years it has a gut wrenching quality to it…other years, …

A Classy Act of Grace

I was in Toronto a few weeks ago at a National Volleyball tournament. Teams of teenaged boys and girls from across the country come together to play copious amounts of volleyball in a huge center in Toronto…dozens of courts. Love watching volleyball. One game I was watching was a particularly competitive one…the games were very …

Ordinary Courage

I signed me up for a class: Brene Brown and Jen Lemen’s Ordinary Courage: Lessons in Love, Shame, and Worthiness. Pray for me, please. 🙂 It’s a six week class…and my own teaching is still two classes shy of finishing at the university…but it’s been a while since I sunk my teeth into something consistent …

Focus on the Intent, not the Content

D’ya notice how often people don’t say what they mean, because they know what they have to actually say to get what they actually want? This weekend, I was sitting in the bleachers of a gym…and the woman beside me dropped a bottle of Gatorade underneath the bleacher…and it rolled several feet several feet sideways …

Teamwork

Love this powerful example of how, when two get together, they are greater than the sum of their parts…and how each celebrate the magic of the chemistry, and choose to powerfully build the other up…and all who watch benefit from seeing this magic.

What Forgiveness is NOT…

Forgiveness is an oft misunderstood concept…and tho simple in its steps, is far from easy to do. Forgiveness is a posture in oneself towards another who has wronged you that moves past the pain of the wrong, to open oneself up to larger possibilities…it focuses on the fullness of life, rather than the wrong of …