This is going to be the year of simplifying and slowing down. It has to be. 2012 and really the past few years have been on overdrive, going, doing, busy-ing, with every weekend seeming busier than the last when all I’ve wanted was time and quiet and reflection and peace. It’s our own doing, of course, to be so damn… Read more →
Year: 2012
Work That Matters: Herb Alpert and Stan Getz (or: Is your work your art?)
You know the feeling when you do something you love – eyes closed, lost in thought, no worries, no little professor on your shoulder critiquing how you’re doing it, no looking at the clock, wishing away the day. It just flows. Everyone has an art – whether it’s gardening or painting or writing or the art of accounting – whatever… Read more →
How to Get More Readers on Your Blog
Blogging is part art, part science. I write this blog to keep my writing chops honed and to build a platform for my voice. Who knows where it will lead? There was never any intention to monetize this blog, just to write and write daily, write well, write so people would read. But if no one sees it, it’s like… Read more →
No Love in Their Hearts
Some months ago, I was at the kitchen table with my kids and my lovely babes kept uttering such profound messages, I felt it was God speaking through them right then and there. That’s the thing with kids: no filter, no preconceptions, no bitterness, so they see incredibly clearly. Eliana’s brilliance: “I believe our life is a chapter book and… Read more →
Happy Christmas
I love when the world is silent. The roads are almost empty, stores are closed, everyone’s home. It’s a day of burrowing under the blanket, listening to soft music, reading a book or hugging someone you love. It’s a day for baking muffins or cinnamon rolls or bread. A day for meditating with my 10-year-old son as the sky rose… Read more →
Wrapping Up a Year – or an Era?
I hate the image circulating on Facebook of the weather forecast with every day at 40-something or 30-something degrees and tomorrow, 12-21-12, at 1250 degrees Fahrenheit and meteors colliding with the Earth. It creeps me out. It scares me. I know the fears surrounding 2012 bringing an end to our world are silly. I buy into a separate philosophy, one… Read more →

Work That Matters: Lutheran Social Services of Michigan www.lssm.org
“Knowing that someone loves you is a treasure,” said Sylvia, a demure, sweet 15-year-old girl desperate for a “forever family.” “It is the world.” Sylvia lives with an elderly, ill grandmother and just learned yesterday that she can never see her father again. “When you have someone love you, it’s just fantastic,” said Ryan, a quiet 14-year-old whose mother died… Read more →