personal development on Winter

In the midst of winter I discovered that there was in me an invincible summer.

Sabbath honors the necessary wisdom of dormancy. If certain plant species, for example, do not lie dormant for winter, they will not bear fruit in the spring. If this continues for more than a season,...

If we want to turn in the direction of what is life giving, we are going to have to let go of Winter. “’Let go’ of the dark, which you wrap yourself in like a straitjacket, and let in the light. Stop ...

If we want to turn in the direction of what is life giving, we are going to have to let go of Winter. “’Let go’ of the dark, which you wrap yourself in like a straitjacket, and let in the light. Stop ...

Faithful God–Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You are always there in times of transition or trial, times of uncertainty and anxiety, or times of accomplishment and celebration. You do not leave us nor fo...

How are vices and virtues distinguished? How is a vice different from sin?…Although most references to the lists of seven use “vice” and “sin” in a roughly synonymous way, distinguishing the two turns...

A Coffee-Cup for Valentines Day? Keep Reading! August 2018 About 3 months ago, having just packed up our whole house and driven for 15 days across the country in the middle of winter with a 2 year ol...

In their book Leadership on the Line, Ronald Heifetz and Marty Linsky describe adaptive challenges as the work confronting a leader when there is no known fix to a problem. It’s when “best practices” ...

Just after leaving a training session on the ice in Detroit, Michigan, on January 6, 1994, Nancy Kerrigan was assaulted in the leg by a man wielding a telescopic baton. Television cameras captured the...

The furniture salesman said the couch would seat five friends without a problem. Then I realized, I don’t have five friends without a problem. Old joke—sorry—but still. It reminds me of the old saying...

Cold words freeze people, and hot words scorch them, and bitter words make them bitter, and wrathful words make them wrathful.

God who brings the cleansing rain saturate our thirsty bones with the milk of mercy sweet with the blood that brings us home God who rules the fiery sun kindle now our brittle hearts set ablaze our t...

This is the Hour of Lead— Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons recollect the Snow— First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go.

Everything has seasons, and we have to be able to recognize when something's time has passed and be able to move into the next season. Everything that is alive requires pruning as well, which is a...

When you accept the fact that sometimes seasons are dry and times are hard and that God is in control of both, you will discover a sense of divine refuge, because the hope then is in God and not in yo...

And time remembered is grief forgotten, And frosts are slain and flowers begotten, And in green underwood and cover Blossom by blossom the spring begins.

Lord—we’re so anxious we can’t wait! Some of us can’t wait for Christmas to come, while (honestly) some others of us can’t wait for it to be over. We’re not proud of it—but that’s just the way it is ...

The season of Advent means there is something on the horizon the likes of which we have never seen before… .What is possible is to not see it, to miss it, to turn just as it brushes past you. And you ...

As you continue in this season of waiting, may your waiting refine you. May you grow in the likeness of Jesus each day while we await his return. And may the love of God, the grace of our Lord Jesus ...

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."

Remember this. When people choose to withdraw far from a fire, the fire continues to give warmth, but they grow cold. When people choose to withdraw far from light, the light continues to be bright in...

We say that Nature rests, yet she is working like mad. She has only shut up shop and pulled the shutters down; but behind them she is unpacking new goods, and the shelves are becoming so full that the...

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...

Waiting is the hardest work of hope.

With the global coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, life stopped. Overwhelmed by the threat of a disease we couldn’t stop and for which we didn’t have the hospital capacity, everyone moved work and s...

This is an age where our sense of spiritual possibility, transcendence, and the presence of God has been drained out. What’s left is a spiritual desert, and Christians face the temptation to accept th...

A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke”

There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within. Moving apprehensively into the desert's emptiness, up the mo...

Everything has its wonders, even darkness and silence, and I learn, whatever state I may be in, therein to be content.

A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us.