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Every day, each of us is given the gift of one thousand, four hundred and forty minutes. Each of these minutes is set before us and what we do with them will be, in the end, the story of our lives. Thank you for including me in your story. I hope the minutes you spend here are a gift for some of the rest of your life’s moments…

Read from the Column “Barefoot & Preaching”

 
The way that words give shape to my world…

The way that words give shape to my world…

We sit at the kitchen table, or around a fire, or on the beach and we talk about the world as we see it. And I am delighted to discover that the world does not look exactly the same to all of us. Occasionally, I leave a conversation and realize that the words have changed my world.

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Soaking up vicarious joy…

Soaking up vicarious joy…

And so, from my resting place, I am discovering vicarious joy. I drive by bursitis yards full of flowers and I pull over and look for awhile. I can’t tend a yard like that on my best day, but it feels amazing to delight in the care and attention of the strangers who have done all that beautiful work.

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To see myself clearly – and with compassion

To see myself clearly – and with compassion

Image by Cindy Lever from Pixabay This spring, I got an itch for change, and I cut my hair. Sixteen inches of curls laying on the floor. I instantly felt so much lighter. And as I went about my life, it was a big enough change that I didn’t recognize my...

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Suicide: On Crushing Weight and Never-Ending Love

Suicide: On Crushing Weight and Never-Ending Love

More deeply than I have ever known anything in my life, that God has poured never-ending unconditional love over me and the whole world for every moment of my existence. That God cried with me for the one I love. I am certain that the Creator and Author of Never-Ending Love is bigger than suicide.

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Emerging as the way of Easter

Emerging as the way of Easter

At all times in history, miracles and new life take time to recognize and integrate. Somehow, we falsely believe that resurrection is a complete departure from the suffering that precedes it. The hope and possibility of something new are emerging from what is with all the power and discomfort of change.

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How are you engaged with your world?

How are you engaged with your world?

When we say “I believe in you” to someone that we care about, we do not mean to say that we intellectually affirm their existence, or that we know all there is to know about them. To say “I believe in you” is to say something of our connection to another person. We are engaged in a relationship that matters.

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All souls: a world of extraordinary dust…

All souls: a world of extraordinary dust…

In my faith tradition, November is both the last month of the faith year, and the month where we remember and celebrate all souls. We write the names of loved ones lost in a book of remembrance and light candles for them. We pray for and with those who have gone to eternity before us. The practices remind me of Ash Wednesday: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

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Gratitude and maintaining perspective

Gratitude and maintaining perspective

Practicing gratitude shifts my perspective. The world does not shift to a perfect place because I am grateful, but the practice allows me to see what is real. That everywhere and always there is both dying and rising happening simultaneously. That joy and suffering co-exist. That people are miraculous and imperfect at the same time.

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Steps…and the growth of adult seasons

Steps…and the growth of adult seasons

Steps have featured prominently on my social media feeds in the last week, as back to school pictures get posted. I love the glimpse into the lives of all the kids and teens, eager and annoyed, performing and resisting the annual tradition.

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Riding waves with grace

Riding waves with grace

Every summer, I wait and hope for our plans to cooperate with the weather and give us a day or two on the lake with (my parents’ beautiful)boat. We need the sunshine to keep us warm enough and the wind to stay mild enough that we can pull the tube behind the boat. The driver and the wind work together to make waves, and the riders delight at the efforts to stay on or fall in. On these rare and perfect days, I might be the biggest kid of all.

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Claiming rest and re-creation this summer

Claiming rest and re-creation this summer

There are always lots of questions in a house with children, and the most common one in my world right now is “What’s the plan for today, Mom?” During the school year, we fall into a rhythm of learning and activities, but the summer has all this space for questions and finding different things to do. And it sometimes feels like rest and recreation means more pressure for a mom in the summer – rather than less.

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A God who sets us free…

A God who sets us free…

Both in communities of faith and in twelve step groups, I have found glimpses of this God who sets us free. I love to get to a place with people where it is possible to ask the question: “Tell me about the God of your understanding.” The God of my understanding is not afraid of our freedom but delights in it.

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Finding Tenderness in the Fog

Finding Tenderness in the Fog

This is the thing about profound human pain, simultaneously physical and emotional and spiritual: I begin to identify with and feel attached to the fog, frozen by the fear that what comes next will be even worse than what is now. Twelve step spirituality and mentors have whispered to me in the fog, as many times as I needed to hear it: you will not move until the pain of staying here exceeds the pain of changing. It is a whisper of tenderness and compassion through my tears.

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Presence: the art of being where I am

Presence: the art of being where I am

On the other side of grief, of leaving the broken, of destruction is recovering, healing, and growing something new. And one of the practices that carries through both seasons is presence. Just plain showing up for what is and who I am today is both difficult and courageous.

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Writing the story of a life

Writing the story of a life

In writing the story of my life, however, I live through a lot of moments that won’t make the cut in the highlights or the bloopers. Our world is currently obsessed with capturing the moments and sharing them, but there is so much (and maybe more) value in the things that happen between photographs and bonfires.

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Trusting what is to take us where we need to go

Trusting what is to take us where we need to go

The forest floor is a mess. Dropped pine needles, interrupted with deer droppings. Broken branches and fallen trees from the windstorm days before, layered on the trunks from seasons past. Grass and leaves and tiny flowers breaking though wherever enough light and water allows.

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Resurrection practice in the wake of surviving suffering

Resurrection practice in the wake of surviving suffering

Even while we hold our own and the world’s pain, we can practice resurrection. We can take a walk and delight in the signs of spring. We can count the buds forming on trees, the flowers breaking through cold earth. We can set our prayers for the suffering in the arms of God for an hour and let ourselves laugh till our sides ache.

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Flowing grace: Responding to the call with gentleness

Flowing grace: Responding to the call with gentleness

After a major trauma, it has been my experience that human capacity for intentional progress on goals is diminished. My therapists reminded me constantly that healing is rarely linear, and though we participate in it, we respond to life in healing ways rather than direct our own healing. I dislike this. And still, I have found it to be true. Healing is a flow of grace that comes from beyond me.

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Leah Perrault

Leah Perrault

Fumbling but faithful disciple of Jesus.

I am so in love with this crazy, amazing life. I’m not sure how God dreamed up a world where I get to walk, unfiltered, through creation, tasting and seeing so much beauty and joy, heartbreak and sorrow and then I am invited to love through it all. Mostly, I am standing in awe at the miracle of showing up for my life, being able to experience this moment, and the next one, and the one after that. I am a lover of words, a think-out-loud processor, and a regretful oft-interrupter  (I’m sorry – God and I are working on that last one.) Still, words are frequently insufficient to capture a person, but for the sake of introduction, here are a few phrases for most essential details: Fumbling but faithful disciple of Jesus. Grateful wife.  Practicing parent. Recovering oldest child.  Big thinker. Life observer. Fast talker. Eager apologizer. Gratitude practitioner. Exercise hater. Unquenchable learner. Compulsive multi-tasker. Board game lover. Deep feeler. Mercy receiver.

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