Since 2008, every year before Christmas I have posted an invitation at the website I shepherd, inviting people to listen for a word to guide them in the year...
Author - Christine Valters Paintner
Many years ago, I visited the beautiful Belgian city of Bruges. Wandering along the canals, I came to what is called a beguinage, where women called Beguines...
I first learned to love the darkness after my mother died. Not initially. At first, after holding her body close in those minutes after her last breath, and...
Exile is an experience of abandonment, something we have likely all encountered at some point on our life journeys. It is rooted in the archetype of the...
We are alive because of our ancestors, that “great cloud of witnesses” mentioned in the letter to the Hebrews (12:1). Our grandmothers and grandfathers...
The stone walls stay cool on this late summer afternoon. Bushels of golden apple light tumble through my small window, casting a yellow square on the floor...
In 2003, when I was 33 years old, my mother died. Her body became overwhelmed quite suddenly by infection because of years of use of prednisone to treat the...
Haws push through tips of thorny branches, turn from green to red, scent of meadowsweet rises on wings of gladness while pink blackberry blossoms emerge with a...
We drove north from Seattle for two hours to see them, geese traveling from one faraway place to another. Evening approaches early in January, we turn down a...
