Singing Along the Journey
Thoughts about faith and wholeness set to the soundtrack of life

The question: how could I ever keep from singing? Well, I couldn't. And here, in these pages, I tell my personal story of redemption through a life in music, with music, and without music. Honestly, I thought that part of the road was over, but lately, I'm feeling like I have more to say. In fact, I've come to understand that the song just can't be separated from the journey after all. So, here we go again. Yes, this story is not over yet. I hope that you will join me for a few steps along the way.

Primary Questions: What is Your Filter?

I am convinced that God often speaks to me through my obsessions.  No, not through an obsession like my need to have a root beer float every day in the summer.  I am talking about my obsessions to understand particular things -- like my current obsession with the word hermeneutics  (which, by the way, auto-correct wants to turn into "therapeutics", a linkage I find totally amazing). This is normally the place where I would put a link to some wonderful article explaining the idea of hermeneutics, but I decided instead to give you my own definition, mostly because of the fact that when I searched the term I found some pretty…
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Holding the Container

Words often fail me when I am asked to explain just what I mean by a ministry of spiritual companionship (or, as it is traditionally called, spiritual direction).  We no longer live in a faith-dominated societal context, although, for some of us, faith still defines our particular echo chamber existence.  But for many people I encounter who might, in the course of small talk, stumble into the discussion of my life and how I pass my days, words like spiritual direction, spiritual companionship, even spiritual friendship might seem strange and off-putting. If we get past the initial shock, and they dare to ask -- well, what do you mean by…
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Telling the Sacred Story, Part 2

This is part 2 of my personal exercise with sacred story, using the story of Jacob from the book of Genesis.  To read part 1, click here. I have one more way that my life resonates with the story of Jacob, one that tells the story of something that is not yet for me complete. And that story is in Gen 32:22-32, the famous overnight wrestling match. Interpreters disagree – was Jacob wrestling with God, or an Angel, or with himself or...? The text is not specific, leaving those of us reading the story some 2000 years later plenty of room for creative interpretation. That is not really the part…
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Subversive Acts: Embrace Your Pathology

Wait...don't run away.  I know, some people have trouble with this strong word like pathology.  But it really isn't my language -- and it took language this strong to get my attention so that I could understand.  Maybe it will help you, too. The image really belongs to the great teacher and writer, Parker J. Palmer.  He uses it in his book, Let Your Life Speak, although he never really offers us a definition for it.  Instead, the idea comes up in his discussion of his own search for his proper vocation: Vocation, the way I was seeking it, becomes an act of will, a grim determination that one's life will…
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Seeing is believing…or is it?

I think a lot about the relationship between our physical senses and our spiritual understanding of our selves and the universe of which we are a part, particularly as I wander the streets in the early morning hours of the day. And more often than not, I am thinking about the importance of what we think we see and what we think that means, an importance that informs our identity and our interactions with life around us. I mean, what do we do with these images? I keep thinking about this quotation from Rainer Maria Rilke's poem, "The Turning Point," (translated by Stephen Mitchell): The work of the eyes is…
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Sunrises and ear worms…

Some mornings have a soundtrack, whether or not you want it. Right now, my morning walk falls in what I call the sunrise sweet spot. I step off in the dark, but, with any luck, at sometime during the walk, I see the passage from dark to light in the skies. And years of music, both church music and the secular classical world, mean that stored somewhere in that grey matter between my ears are a whole lot of tunes to feed my personal soundtrack. Today was one of those We Shall Behold Him kind of moments. Those moments happen often as I live into the arrival of the fall…
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Lost angel recovered…

Off and on, all day long, I have sat with my silver cloth, cleaning years of tarnish from this little medallion. The nooks and crannies continue to defeat my efforts, a bit at least, but I think that I have finally achieved a level of clean that makes it wearable again. And tomorrow, I'll add it to a chain again and place it around my neck. That might seem a lot of intention for a tiny medal of angel, particularly for a person who does not consider herself to be an "angel" person. You know what I'm talking about. But I want to wear this medal tomorrow. I want to…
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Park benches and the water of life…

Lately I am noticing the subtleties of a summer sunrise. I mean not even I can rise early enough in June and July to walk before the sun is fully risen, no matter what advantage that would give me in terms of temperature and crowded sidewalks.  In the heat of the past month here in DC, the word subtleties would not have seemed to apply to the way I experienced the sun on my morning race to get my exercise in while being outside was still mildly possible. But as August moves into September, more and more days, my feet step out onto the pavement with light, yes, but with…
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Hints of resurrection…

I have to give credit to my friend Mitzi Budde for the phrase that has become the title. This was her observation and it stuck. I continue to be in awe of this plucky little former tree. This was what hope looked like on a Wednesday morning. Not the greatest picture, but if you look at the bright green shoots with the tinge of color, that's what I'm talking about. Three weeks before this morning late in August, a tree surgeon came and cut down our beloved 20+ year old crepe myrtle. It had split under the weight of snow during the winter and then picked up an infestation called…
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Contemplating the unexpected…

I owe the phrase of this title to my friend the Rev. Kathy Guin. Sometimes, others can see so much better than I can, even when I know that I see something. Sometimes it is through the eyes of others that we actually can see what we are doing, and a little bit about why we do it. I was just surprised by the presence of a light, dainty, pink rose after weeks of a Washington-style heat wave. I mean, I was only able to write, "As the hottest stretch of summer continues, all over the neighborhood, the roses have decided to bloom again...this little one is mine, on a…
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