Defilement When I first thought about this subject matter I couldn’t really get a hold of it. Isn’t every space that exists a sacred space? Hasn’t God created everything, making it so? And then when I sat down to think about it some more, an image came to me. And it led me to see what I really believe about sacred spaces. Now right off the bat, there really is a difference between personal sacred spaces and...
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(by Ziggy Rendler-Bregman) When I am silent it is possible to see particles of dust collide without making a sound, each speck of carbon from the bone of some fallen bird. When I am silent it is possible to hear how song lines flatten the edge of time, my own heartbeat below the bridge, where a stream with its memory of cloud flows into a deeper river. When I am silent it is possible to take the smallest hand and walk the garden wall...
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Ida It’s funny, choosing my own grandmother to be a saint. She was my nemesis as a child. The person who stood between me and myself. Who did her best to block any affirmation and acknowledgement coming my way. It is funny because just the writing of the above sentence caused an image to flash through me. It was of my grandmother as a child herself. Second to the youngest. Three older sisters, one older brother. I know from...
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Raise Me Up, Lord. I have strong feelings about sidewalks. Having grown up in the country—so country that most of the road I lived on wasn’t paved—in that setting I have no problem with taking a walk with the dogs down the middle of the road. Or on a leaf-strewn path through the woods. But get me to a place where there are more cars than trees and I get more demanding about what my feet land on when I am outside and getting...
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Turning Inside Out We have an insides. And we have an outsides. And, in the usual manner of things, the outsides are what is valued. The look. The sound. The actions. Yes, we manage to say, from time to time, that someone is beautiful on the inside. But does that comment ever have any real impact on anyone? But we are in ordinary time and ordinary life when we care about our appearance. Our behavior. Our life. When we step...
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