“Gratitude … secures the kind of joy that us human beings look for. I always say joy is the happiness that doesn’t depend on what happens. And, usually, we have the idea, well, when something nice happens, then I’m happy, and when something bad happens, of course I’m unhappy. Well, you can be unhappy, and …Read More
Category: Spirit
Fooling With Words – Golden Retrievals
“One of poetry’s greatest powers is its preservative ability to take a moment in time and make an attempt to hold onto it.” ~ Mark Doty Poetry is one of my great loves for how it often captures what is beyond words, and in that great paradox, captures it with words. Poetry connects us through …Read More
Poet: Debra Hiers begins with Love
“If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry.” ~ Emily Dickinson Every now and then, a poem captures my attention. This poem came to me from a friend at the start of 2017. So commanding is the poem, that I have committed it to …Read More
Minimalism – less stuff is more
“What did we do before we knew we needed all this stuff?“ My seventy-year-old friend suddenly paused in the middle of a story of her childhood and then asked me this question. While it was definitely a question, it seemed more like a statement. I was speechless. Simple things are profound. Life was much simpler …Read More
Connecting to God through Nature
As I hiked up the Sacred Valley of the Incas to Machu Picchu, the backpack full of snacks and clothes got heavier and heavier. My shoulders ached. I started to eat the snacks, just to lighten the load. Oranges seemed like a good idea at the start of this trip, but now they just felt …Read More
David Steindl-Rast: 3 Steps to Gratitude
“It is not happiness that makes us grateful, it is gratefulness that makes us happy.” ~ Brother David Steindl-Rast, Benedictine Monk According to David Steindl-Rast, gratitude can be found in 3 easy steps — the same steps to crossing a street. Earlier this year, I created 3 Simple Steps to Balance. (Check out my prior post.) …Read More
“The Box” by Dr. Joel Storyteller
To my Storytelling Fans! I discovered this memory in a storytelling workshop several years ago with Kim Weitkamp. She is masterful in teaching how to find your story ideas, and I love sharing her technique of memory mapping in workshops. In 2013, my audience was Toastmasters so the memory became a speech for a contest. …Read More
Winter, time for reflection
Guest Blog Post by Janis McCall: Here in the wilds of Argyll in Scotland, high in the Northern Hemisphere, close to the Arctic Circle, the depths of Winter are very evident. The days grow ever shorter, and darkness is the norm for 18+ hours per day. However, this is not a time of despair but …Read More
Black Elk Speaks: Vision of Unity
“… I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being. And I saw that the sacred hoop of my people …Read More
Poem: Wolf Path – Animal Medicine
Several years ago, my friend Jamie McCall was working with his “inner wolf.” He felt a calling to Wolf Medicine, as the Native Americans would call it. (For the Native Americans, “Medicine” is anything that heals the body, mind, or spirit. Read my prior blog post on Animal Medicine. Here, the spiritual medicine is wisdom.) …Read More