When I was about six years old, at Christmas time a very large, rectangular-shaped object covered with a blanket appeared in our living room near where the gifts were kept. My brother and I were intrigued, wondering who could be getting such a large gift. I...
spiritual practice
The Gifts of a Grumpy Teenager
I had a revelation the other day: My ministry is a grumpy teenager. For people new to my blog, I should mention I am an ordained clergy person in the United Church of Christ. I also teach yoga and meditation and do leadership and organizational development and am a...
You Will Disappoint People
Spoiler Alert: I wasn’t one of the popular kids. I went to a small Catholic school growing up, and there were only five girls (including me) in my class. The upper elementary girlfriend dynamics played out rather harshly with so few girls. There weren’t enough of us...
Four Simple Steps for Managing Time
I really never intended to be a time management guru. What I really wanted was to help people identify their dreams, then coach, train and support people and organizations while they implemented those dreams. Over the years, I’ve coached lots of people through change....
Unexpected Abundance: A Year of Lost Rewatch
I swear I had nothing to do with it ending this way. It just so happened that on the last Saturday of my August Birthday Month of Abundance, I completed a two-year rewatch of the 2004-2010 ABC series Lost. I joined up when I discovered The Storm Podcast was...
From Envy to Gratitude
In my 20s and early 30s, envy would rise up like bile in my throat whenever I opened another calligraphy-covered, heavyweight envelope inviting me to yet another wedding. In my 30s and early 40s, envy weighed on my shoulders when I saw others’ careers progress and...
3 Mindfulness Tips to Ease Back-to-School Anxiety
Even though I liked to learn and did pretty well in school, I felt pretty nervous every year before starting class again. The anxiety amped up in middle and high school. I dreaded seeing students who picked on me. I was insecure about my body in gym class. I was...
The Most Beautiful Om
I have chanted the sound Om before and after yoga classes thousands of times. When I felt and heard the sound of Om reverberating off the walls in the actual room of my home yoga studio in Columbus, Ohio, for the first time in more than a year, I was awestruck. The...
“We’re All Storytellers”
“We’re all storytellers.” The truth of the statement washed over my skin in tingly waves. I paused, drew a deep breath and continued our conversation about our recent Sparking Creativity Retreat. I had been incubating the idea for a retreat like this for years. Back...
The Upside Down-Ness of Beginnings
Starting a new spiritual practice can feel upside down. These are practices that are supposed to ground you, focus you, center you. Ironically, the beginning of a new practice (or starting anything, really) does not feel that way. Starting meditation, yoga, or prayer...
Making New to Let Go
I was 7 or 8 years into my yoga practice before I really started listening to my body. I wanted to lose weight, but wanted to do it in a different way. I’d done it in the past, but my weight still yo-yoed with the ups and downs of life’s stress. I applied what I had...
Mindful Advent: Love
Last year, my family attended a Christmas Eve Catholic mass, as we usually do. Though I grew up as a Roman Catholic, I left that church for the United Church of Christ many years ago. Over the years, I have learned to appreciate the richness of the Catholic tradition,...
Mindful Advent: Peace
I remember one time many years ago I was talking to my mother on my cell phone while driving somewhere through Iowa. (Don’t worry. Hands free.) The conversation resulted, as it often did, in conflict. I was skating along the edge of my last nerve with her — a sadly...
From Judgement to Compassion
This summer I began taking walks nearly every morning as an active extension of my meditation practice. Each morning, I stood up from my meditation cushion, put on walking clothes and shoes, and did NOT take headphones. Taking my first steps in the walk, I feel...
Advent 2: Peace, Shalom, Contentment
Because I love the Christian season of Advent that leads up to Christmas, I will again be writing each week of Advent a piece around the week’s theme and inviting you into a spiritual practice with me. I felt almost everything but peaceful this week. Scattered....