Posts by Julia

Birdsong

(by Anne D. LeClaire) Learning the Difference Between Listening And Waiting To Talk When she first arrived at her uncle’s estate and was exploring the grounds, Mary Lennox caught sight of a bird with a bright red breast sitting on the topmost branch of a tree, “and suddenly he burst into his winter song – almost as if he had caught sight of her and was calling to her.” On one particular morning my friend Ann and I...

On Retreat

Walk Away It’s a battle term—retreat. It is the opposite of attack. To remove oneself from the fray. To hide amongst the trees, out of the sunlight, off the plain of conflict. It means to drop your weapon; to run, empty-handed away. It means to stop fighting; to stop thinking about fighting, even. Retreat. We want to think of it as a time of rest, of serenity, of knitting our frayed souls back together. But it’s really...

Here Is Good News

(by Christoph Friedrich Blumhardt) Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee.  Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down.  Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them.  The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking, and the blind seeing.  And they praised the God of...

Searching For Sunday by Rachel Held Evans

First the love, then the hate Rachel Evans’s book, Searching For Sunday, is organized into the seven sacraments of the church: Baptism, Confession, Holy Orders, Communion, Confirmation, Anointing of the Sick, and Marriage.  Each sacrament is given a handful of chapters, which gives the author the freedom to approach each sacrament from different angles. And approach them from different angles she does. In spades. I cannot fault...

God The Artist

God, when you thought of a pine tree, How did you think of a star? How did you dream of the Milky Way To guide us from afar? How did you think of a clean brown pool Where flecks of shadows are? God, when you thought of a cobweb, How did you think of dew? How did you know a spider’s house Had shingles bright and new? How did you know the human folk Would love them like they do? God, when you patterned a bird song, Flung on a...