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Tag Archives: transitions
I have been absent for a bit. Sometimes I wonder how people can blog every day, tweet every 5 minutes and read everyone else’s articles to blog and tweet about too. I sigh and begin to compare. How do they do that? You’re not good enough, the voice I am familiar with so quickly jumps in. I compare myself. I compare myself to fellow teachers, to my peers, to other
Posted in A Beautiful Mess, Anecdotes
Tagged a beautiful mess, Community, higher education, teaching, transitions
3 Comments
Welcome summer! A new season, a new time to reflect and perhaps relax. However, I find myself swamped with textbooks already as I try to learn German for a proficiency exam before going back to school in the fall. I have recently felt, as it would seem so do many of my current companions, that we have fallen into an in-between. So today before I launch into translating a few
I’m three decades old today. Old enough to say, over 20 years ago I remember what happened. I was 10 years old. It was a heated election year; I didn’t really understand what that was about. Not sure I do now either. The Berlin wall fell just a few years prior and we had a piece of it framed on our wall from my uncle. I looked at this piece
Posted in A Beautiful Mess, Anecdotes
Tagged a beautiful mess, Community, creativity, emotions, Homestead, Self-Care, spirituality, transitions, Writing
4 Comments
Let it be a process. Those were the words I heard last night. Gentle words. A hearty reminder. I went back to school last week. But before I am “official,” I signed up to take a crash course in German. My PhD program is old school (alte Schule, if you will) – I must learn a research language. For now, it is a hoop to jump through. A requirement
Our community lost a dear member this past week. There is a big hole in our congregation; one that many of us have pondered in conversation how it will be filled? I spent time watching the eclipse this week which happened to be on the same day she passed. The world faded to gray for just a moment. I burned my retina trying to see what was happening. Between waiting
The fruit trees are blossoming. The promise of fruit – someday. But definitely the promise of spring’s entrance. I used to correlate spring’s arrival with the bathing suits’ overnight appearance at Target. Summer is almost here, I would chant in my head seeing spring as something to survive to get to freedom. Now spring is one of my favorite seasons. There is a Zen saying that when the first bud
It’s a Wonderful Life. It’s Ash Wednesday and I have Christmas on my brain. Valentine’s Day, Fat Tuesday, Spring Equinox, are all circling me and somehow I am back on Christmas Eve with a suicidal man. “I’m worth more dead than alive.” But then through hitting rock bottom, George learns he wants to live. This story has more to do with Easter than Christmas. It is about a necessary cycle
“Congratulations!” It was a simple word holding so much from a person who had the keys. I looked up at this man whom I call a friend and an adviser, and now… my professor. “Have letters gone out yet?” “No, they haven’t,” I replied with a Cheshire grin. I had officially been accepted to my future – a Ph.D. program. “Oh, well, we met last week. Letters should be going
Posted in A Beautiful Mess, Homesteading, Thoughts on life
Tagged a beautiful mess, change, Homestead, Self-Care, spiritual direction, spirituality, transitions, Writing
1 Comment
I’m starting a new series on change this month. Be sure to check out new thoughts each week as I wrestle with teaching this idea to my students and living it out in my own life. January (which I just spelled Janurary) is over. This also means a new semester is well under way. Seeing as my spelling is suffering, you might be able to tell that my head is
Two leaders died this week, both with incredibly different legacies. One nuclear; one Velvet. My context of both is drastically different: My picture, driven by the media, of Kim Jong Il is a crazed, power-hungry, slightly insane man. My picture of Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic, is a man of integrity, humor, creativity and passion. This version was shaped by his friend, a fighter pilot from WW2,
Posted in A Beautiful Mess, Anecdotes
Tagged a beautiful mess, advent, Community, Peacemaking, spiritual direction, spirituality, the church, transitions, Writing
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