This photo is me on the day I won FIRST PRIZE at the craft fair for the sunflower shirt I sewed! (See Footnote 11 for why I subtly placed that fact here). Oh! And I HAPPEN to be wearing that EXACT shirt today!
That is VERY auspicious for our online times together.
Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)
I talked about it BEFORE. It’s finally happening, starting TONIGHT: online connection, finding our ears to learn to hear the nudges of God together, and tea.2
Note that no one needs to speak during the prayer (unless you want to). Oh! And stay afterwards for a connection time, to get to know each other, if you have a few minutes.
Why not?
Let’s learn to soar together, friend, as we practice connection with God.
Join us for online connection time, to attach our ears that keep falling off, and learn to hear from God together.
I suddenly remembered that a long time ago, I had promised a connection time for readers of this site, as described in the article below.
More about this connection time, which is starting this Thursday at 5:00 pm Pacific time, will be rolling out later this week! (Who says I didn’t start a group yet because I’m afraid of inadequacy or failure? But more on that in a future article!)
My mouth hung open. I stared at the woman walking past me. It was not polite to stare (I know, okay!), but I forgot that my mouth was still hanging open.
I had just worked out at the gym. My muscles were getting EVEN stronger! For example, this time I didn’t have to go to the far edge of the gym to find lighter weights than the ones our instructor set out for the group class.
Have you tried every other path to success, friend? There is only one more way to try!
We are serving up some previously published articles for you to feast on this week, while our family is on spring break in Victoria, Canada.
Goodbye, winter! Hello, flowers! Victoria has regular spring flowers, like these daffodils, found in the rest of Canada, albeit a bit earlier that the rest of us.
(Who CARES?)
But they also have bushes of things like these already in bloom, flaunting us.
We are serving up some previously published articles for you to feast on this week, while our family is on spring break.1
Goodbye, winter!
Hello, flowers in Victoria, Canada! Enjoy some of this site’s top articles from around this time last year.2 And may these articles help you stride confidently through life!
I was pushing my shopping cart in the grocery store. I was in a hurry (Of course!) and pushing more on one side because the thing kept veering off to one side as I walked, trying to smash into every aisle. “I. Only. Have. To. Get. A. Few. More. Items,” I grunted begrudgingly, pushing hard with both hands on one side of the cart.
I don’t want you to go through life like this. I thought I sensed God whispering in my heart.
And while we’re chatting, do you want another cookie and to join me in playing a game on my iPad, friend?
The sun peeked through the darkness.
The storm was lifting. Hope filled the air along with the fresh scent of life, stirring, awakening with the rain. It was a new season.
Today.
Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)
I stretched, removed the covers from my bed and sat up, looking around me blankly. What would this new day, this new season bring, now that this storm was lifting, I wondered? I poured my coffee and asked these questions of God, and his whisperings startled me.
There is so much in my life that He is longing to awaken. How about in yours?
Be alert, be present. I’m about to do something brand-new. It’s bursting out! Don’t you see it?
And how do we awaken, if we, like Sleeping Beauty, have been spiritually resting for a few years?
Try this: As the song below plays1 and as you sit with your morning coffee, pondering this new day or this new season, what stirrings in the dry soil of your heart, of seeds coming to life, do you sense?
Oh! And she sings of repentance in this song, but I wouldn’t recommend THAT or anything! In my humble opinion, there doesn’t seem to generally be any need to travel down any spiritual path as far as repentance would take us.
Please!
I definitely recommend turning back and hanging out with the rest of us who don’t want to walk THAT far! And anyway, the part of the song about repentance doesn’t apply to me, thankfully! (It may, however, apply to you, of course.)
True repentance [is] not merely . . . sorrow over sin, but . . . a “sweet sorrow” arising from a new, awakened delight in the beauty of God.2
1 She’s a little serious in this song. You’ll want to offer her a cookie and tell her, “Hey, Lady! Relax a bit!” (At least I do.) The point is that it’s good to wake up spiritually. She gets that part, so we can at least learn that bit from her!
2 And may you awake a little more with each poke repentance gives our sleeping form, friend.
Got time to remove the cultural hook in your nose, leading you, friend? You’ll feel better after!
I recently learned that the article below was one of my (relatively) more popular articles published around this time last year.
(Look! I don’t know why people read this stuff, either! But hopefully I figure out – or invent? – something useful to say to you one day, so keep reading, just in case a nugget of wisdom accidentally appears amidst the banality of life!)
Got time to watch the movie going on right next to you, friend?
The bird flitters from branch to branch.
It’s a yellowish green. It has yellowish-green feathers and a little white circle around its eye – a flycatcher. This family of birds has built its nest here for at least a dozen of its little bird generations, for as long as we have visited this summer cabin.
We didn’t notice them for the first few years.
Join people in over fifty countries who read this to gain valuable life wisdom! (Or maybe they’re just laughing at me? . . . Whatever!)
We only heard them, the little “Whew-it!” sound, rising at the end, every two minutes or so. “Just another bird sound,” we thought, eating our food at the outside table and distracted by the food and by each other. But that sound sure was insistent.
Could there be more to this incessant sound than just another bird flitting around nearby somewhere?
“Can you pass the peanut butter?”
And we forgot about them again.
Until the baby bird fell out of the nest that summer and flapped pathetically on the floor right beside our table outside.
“Whew-it! Whew-it!” We heard that same sound now, but more intensely, more insistently, louder.
It was the Father bird calling, imploring the little bird to stretch its wings, give flying a go, insistent now.
Our eyes had finally awakened to EXACTLY WHICH bird made that insistent sound, and was the nest far away? Directly above where the little bird was flapping, we finally noticed the obvious – a nest in the rafters just above us. The birds flitting above us as we ate our meals several times per day were the parents. They were doing their little bird jobs, telling the babies to wait a bit – they would bring more food once the scary demon humans had eaten their meals and finally cleared out. The birds were flitting and making noise above us as we were eating our meals.
A lot was going on that we didn’t have eyes to see until the unusual happened.
A baby bird flapped, and its Father called next to our feet as we ate our lunch that day.
And when we got up from the distractions of more food and of each other, and took a closer inspection at this bird, and then followed the clues to notice the bird’s nest above our heads, finally, we were awakened to a whole other world that had been going on right next to us for years.
And in precisely the same way, God wants us to open our eyes to see the realities of the spiritual dimension, happening right next to us every minute of our lives.
Sometimes we see something remarkable, something that makes us rub our eyes and say, “What now?” kind of like a baby bird flapping at our feet during breakfast.
Sometimes we hear a sound, repetitive and gentle, kind of like the “Whew-it!” sound of a flycatcher repeatedly calling to its young while we distractedly eat breakfast.
“What was that?” we wonder, but then all is quiet again, and maybe it’s just another bird in the trees doing who-knows-what, we think, returning to our breakfast cereal.
Restoring Life 