by Lindsay McLaughlin | Jan 2, 2017 | Contemplations, Uncategorized
This was a reflection offered near midnight on December 31, in the candlelit Meditation Shelter at Rolling Ridge, part of an annual gathering of friends and journeyers to cross the threshold together. I began writing it while on the way to visit family in North...
by Linda DeGraf | Jan 2, 2017 | Contemplations, Uncategorized
January 2017 As we welcome 2017, saying “Happy New Year” may feel a bit trite and hollow in this troubled world. Yet in a recently published collection of songs, Carrie Newcomer reminds us to hold on to what sustains us: “The shadows of this world will say—There’s no...
by Lindsay McLaughlin | Dec 7, 2016 | Uncategorized
Photo from NASA, Public Domain Advent always was an interim time, spanning the threshold between the harvest festivals of autumn and the vulnerable, fierce hope of Christmas. That “betwixt and between” time and place, where things tend to happen, wove itself around...
by Linda DeGraf | Dec 5, 2016 | Contemplations, Uncategorized
Standing at the edge of an abyss is no way to contemplate the coming new year. Yet that is how my heart feels, as though the earth has shaken beneath our feet and split asunder. I am reminded of a conversation in a television show of my youth —a teenage...
by Linda DeGraf | Nov 22, 2016 | Uncategorized
Photo credit: Linda DeGraf October 2016 Dear Friends ~ As I write, the wind stirs leaves barely tinged with autumn color as a steady rain soaks into the earth so recently parched by summer’s sun. On the cusp of seasonal change, the land seems poised between fecundity...
by Lindsay McLaughlin | Nov 21, 2016 | Uncategorized
This was the opening reflection for the Friends of Silence Board Meeting November 20, 2016. Our country and our world is in a good bit of trouble right now. We live in what storyteller Michael Meade calls “black dog times”. The tale goes like this: The Old People of...
