personal development on Ebb and Flow

I found that tides and currents do not determine destination. That is what rudders and engines and sails are for. While you don’t dare ignore the tides and currents, you also never get anywhere if you...

By illustration, I have been told that when a cow is born, she innately senses that her departure from her mother’s warm womb to a cold, scary, unknown world outside is upon her. In response, she will...

Our bodies move to a rhythm of work and rest that follows the rhythm originally strummed by God on the waters of creation. As God worked, so shall we; as God rested, so shall we. Working and resting, ...

We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled. The trick is, knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out.

Transition is one of the givens in our lives, and we only live well, we only manage our lives well, when we manage these transitions well. Our world changes; the circumstances of our lives change. The...

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

So, how are you feeling?  It’s not a trick question. But it’s more complicated than it sounds. We’re always feeling something, usually more than one thing at a time. Our emotions are a continuous ...

Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance and order and rhythm and harmony.

[D]o you have margin in your life, like the white spaces between these words and the edges of the page? Having margin is about intentionally scheduling white space in your calendar to pray, rest, read...

Sadly, the need for recovery is often viewed as evidence of weakness rather than an integral aspect of sustained performance. The result is what we give almost no attention to renewing and expanding o...

No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.

My friend Wendy calls the incremental disappointments we endure over the years “the slow leak of life.”

An understanding and living of Sabbath time can help support a sane and holy rhythm of life for us. With it, we are given an alternative to the culture’s growing movement between driven achievement an...

As I have worked to clarify my calling, I have learned to pay attention to my energy levels in response to different activities. If I experience a particular activity as being inordinately draining, I...

Repetition is a form of change

When I fully enter time’s swift current, enter into the current moment with the weight of all my attention, I slow the torrent with the weight of me all here.

Lord God, refresh us with living water, Illuminate our path with your light, Speak to us with the still small voice And calm the storms of our lives with your peace.

In all life we see this circle of giving, which is the law of love. Consider electricity: when electricity moves through metal wires it does so by the movement of electrons from one atom to another. T...

Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of i...

Transformation is a process, and as life happens there are tons of ups and downs. It's a journey of discovery - there are moments on mountaintops and moments in deep valleys of despair.

Life just gives you time and space—it’s up to you to fill it.

The waters are rising, but so am I. I am not going under, but over.

At every point in the human journey we find that we have to let go in order to move forward; and letting go means dying a little. In the process we are being created anew, awakened afresh to the sourc...

In his highly insightful work, Inside Job , Stephen W. Smith shares insights on the topic of rest from the poet David Whyte: [The] poet David Whyte opens our minds and hearts to rest when he writ...

It is life in slow motion, it’s heart in reverse, it’s hope-and-a-half: too much and too little at once. It’s a train that suddenly stops with no station around, and we can hear the cricket, and, lean...

Listen to your life. All moments are key moments.

Turn to the sun rising above your head or the leaves of the deciduous trees falling to the ground and think, "In the same way there is a rhythm to nature, I have rhythms too."

In this short poem, the psychologist Daniel Goleman (the developer of the concept of Emotional Intelligence (E.Q.)) builds on the work of R. D. Laing’s “knots.” The poem is a helpful reminder that our...

Have you ever played in a swimming pool and tried to hold a beach ball under the surface? Its tendency-you might even say its penchant and desire-is to rise to the surface. It is “restless” when it is...

When I am away from Liturgy for too long, I find I burn for it now, for the steadiness of the calendar, the words" that ring out in repetition, the heavy scented air. When I return each week, I a...