Today I read an editorial on Anne Rice’s recent comment about no longer professing to be Christian. She claims to continue to be a “follower of Christ”, but rejects “being anti-gay, anti-feminist “. . . ultimately “anti-life.” . . . . her brief but brutal description of what Christianity has become. She refuses to allow the heart of her [...]
The Silent “R” of Risk
Okay, before you wonder… I do know that the “r” in risk is not silent. But there is another “r” in risk. And I’ve been noticing that it’s been quite silent for me. That second “r” is: Reward. In Laura’s new Be You Out Loud class, she puts an emphasis on the reward part of [...]
Do You Hate Me Now?
For the past 16 years, I have been mothering a mostly delightful child. OK, let’s be more specific. For the first 12 years, an entirely delightful child. Then things started to change. And now, 16 years into motherhood, I can truthfully say I feel like I’m living with a possessed alien. I’ve never known such [...]
Risking My Art and My Trust
After completing an “Artist’s Way” group with Laura I reached out to an old friend who was starting to try his hand at visual arts – he’s a poet and a writer. We converse every week about our art in a mutually supportive way as suggested by Laura and Julia Cameron. We had to have [...]
The Risk of Choosing My Religion
The Risk of Choosing My Religion Have you ever been afraid to look too closely at something because you may no longer be able to accept it despite its flaws? When it comes to religion, I never made a conscious choice. Instead, I inherited it. My parents are and always have been active members of [...]
Risky Is-ness
This physical realm is filled with riddles for us to solve along the way… perhaps the greatest riddle of them all is that the answers are different for each of us at any given moment in our lives, or that reality is relative. You can examine two people whose lives appear to be similar, both [...]
One Thing
People ask me all the time what it takes to be a working musician. Most of the time what they really mean is what does it take to be a “star.” I generally have to explain the difference to them and hope they understand that, while, yes, I still have stars I am chasing, the [...]
Finding My Way to Faithless
You invited us to risk being faithless on Monday. You asked us what we think. I began a reply to that post, but when I realized how long it was getting, I thought I’d post it as a new post, instead. For me, at least, it helps to have the context of the passage in [...]
An Invitation to Risk being Faithless
In the glorious poem, “The Invitation,” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer, there is a line that I have often questioned. And yesterday, while writing my post about feeling all my feelings, I think I came upon the answer, at least for me. The line is: “I want to know… if you can be faithless and therefore [...]
The Power of Admitting Your Dreams
Less than six weeks ago, a good friend and I had a conversation about one of her deepest aspirations. She’s been on the staff at her church for many years, but she confessed to me for the first time that she’s listening for a call from God to be an ordained minister. I understood this [...]
