Cuddled By God

Thank God for good friends. Friends who bring wine to choir practice when they know you’ve had a crappy (series of) day(s). Friends who stand in your driveway and cry with you when you say, “Why does everything have to be so HARD?” Friends who send you links to articles and reflections that challenge you…

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Creation: a chiropractic adjustment for the soul

My calendar for the next two weeks has written all across it in big block letters, “KEEP FREE FOR OUTSIDE.” I was expecting peak color this week, but the trees are stubbornly clinging to green. I think I might have to add a week to my blocked-off schedule. Hike, bike, kayak: this is a priority…

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Bigger Than Me

Sometimes, I just need to get away. No matter how much work is hanging over my head, I know I need to make the time to hike, or bike, or kayak—and always, to find a quiet, beautiful spot to sit and be still. It’s necessary for my mental health. Sometimes I get a twinge of…

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Anxiety 2.0

Years ago, when I was in my first bout of full-blown anxiety, Christian passed on to me a book he’d been given called Telling Yourself the Truth. The point of it was that the words we use in describing to ourselves our reality have the power to shape our emotional state for good for for…

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Butting Heads With Siri

Siri stopped talking to us when we crossed the Michigan border. Christian had been worried the entire day about running out of battery, because he’d forgotten his car charger. Now he was even more uptight. Perhaps it will not come as a surprise to most of you to hear that I was not particularly sympathetic…

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Things I’m Loving Right Now

Books: A Marginal Jew. This is a series of four books, actually, and I’m on the second. They are dense reading, with the end notes to each chapter taking more space than the text, and it is ponderous and takes real mental effort to get through. Yet the level of detail in Meier’s analysis brings…

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Early Spring in the Woods

I could swear I can hear the earth breathing in and out around me. The tiny sounds that I would attribute to rustling leaves, except there aren’t any leaves in the trees. Or to the drip of water from rock to rock, except it isn’t water dripping. It’s as if the thick carpet of dry…

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