These title words from Walt Whitman’s poem have been winding their way around my head this week. Whitman wrote this poem as a tribute to President Abraham Lincoln following his death. The poem doesn’t specifically mention Lincoln but for Whitman he was the captain of our collective ship, the United States, which had just barely…

I found myself laughing out loud this week when I saw that a friend posted on Facebook that January was just a month of Mondays. I so agree with her. The bitter cold weather, the new Covid variant, and the build up of troops at the Ukrainian border have it truly made it a month…

On Monday morning some of the students, other paras and I watched from our classroom window the smoke and steam rise from the fire at the old Seaway Hotel. We didn’t know what was burning at the time but it made an impressive cloud. I later learned it was the old hotel, now vacant and…

We all remember where we were a year ago on January 6th. It was a truly frightening day, made even more so in Duluth because we were in the midst of a city-wide internet outage. No one here could get access to information for several hours. Around five in the afternoon the internet was restored and…

When I am among the trees,especially the willows and the honey locust,equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,they give off such hints of gladness.I would almost say that they save me, and daily. I am so distant from the hope of myself,in which I have goodness, and discernment,and never hurry through the worldbut walk…

 Hannah prayed and said,    “My heart exults in the Lord;    my strength is exalted in my God.” I Samuel 2: 1 Our daughter Hannah made it home from Milwaukee last night in spite of the  high winds and thick fog. She made it home just in time for her birthday. The day she was born there was also…

“The voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way . .. “  Mark 1: 3  In this season of Advent we remember that the wilderness was the place that John called the people of God to come out to. He asked them to come away and prepare their hearts for the new thing that…

“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all the lands”. Psalm 100:1 The sunrise was so beautiful this morning with deep reds and golds filling the sky and brushing beautiful light upon the trees. The words of Psalm 100 were my morning prayer.  Well at least the first few verses of the Psalm, “ Make…

“In my mother’s house there are many dwelling places. . .” paraphrase of John 14: 2 These words echoed in my head last week as we began the work of helping my mom move from her home of 60 years into a senior independent living apartment in her St. Louis Park neighborhood. After 60 years of…

There is a nakedness to the trees in this season, a transparency to them. Perhaps this is part of the reason the Celts believed that there is a thinness to this season. They felt that at this time of year the veil between the living and the dead was very sheer. May Sarton in part of…