In April 1995, just before I left for a month-long trip to Slovenia, I had a brief telephone conversation with Linda King Newell. I had been invited to speak at the annual Pilgrimage Retreat. She…
In 1975 psychiatrist Raymond A. Moody introduced the expression “near-death experience” (NDE) in his bestselling book Life After Life. By 1988 more than 3 million copies of the book had been sold (not including foreign…
Ahumming stillness. In the orchards up and down the valley
the pith of summer turns slowly to juices. Ripeness:
what my grandmother knows, hunched in her silence.
Long after my father’s kindeys failed, I keep in a willow box under my bed the two letters he wrote to me in the thirty years since I left home. Mother did practically all the…
Pluck them out one by one
Melancholy, dearth, unableness
Squeeze out the poisons
Scratch away the sting
[1]Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints see pro claiming the gospel to all people as an important part of the church’s responsibility. Many elements of their missionary efforts have not changed…
I turned from the calendar to find the diary in my bookcase. It was hard to miss; the orange and red cover stood out like a sister at a priest hood meeting. I started to reach for it but stopped and just looked at it. A voice in my head rose above the confusion, “The prophets have said to keep a journal.” Yet I could not pick up the journal and write.
Within historically-oriented religious faiths, such as those deriving from Judaism, Christianity, or Islam, any effort to develop new paradigms for understanding their historical development, especially in their formative stages, is inextricably intertwined with efforts to…
My first inklings of the possibilities of God’s grace in my life came through two personal experiences. The first occurred during a family Christmas dinner. My youngest sister had brought her boyfriend. They were leaving…
I release my pretty doves
and they ascend like sparks
to disappear. And look
how restless I am,