Love does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 1 Corinthians 13 If we eliminate the negatives, we find that the absence of envy, boasting, and pride imply the presence of something else. Perhaps they imply that love is content, benevolent, and humble. Perhaps they imply that love celebrates the good always. We celebrate its presence anywhere. We value goodness so highly that we delight in it even when it unfolds in the life of someone else. We enjoy the presence of good, even when it’s not on our preferred time table. We’re content with the good bestowed upon us and we don’t boast or feel proud…
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Love is Kind
Love is patient. Love is kind. The two both seem to sprout forth from a common ground of grace. Where patience is a matter responding with grace, kindness is a matter of initiating grace. Patience is gracious in its reaction and kindness is gracious in its proactivity. Kindness seeks out ways to exert extra thought and effort on someone’s behalf. Kindness necessitates that we think of another—which therefore means that our thoughts take a break from being on ourselves. And so when we pursue kindness, we are also allowing space for the cultivation of selflessness. And that kind of seems to be the way of it. As I meditate on…
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Love is Patient
I’m meditating on the love passage in 1 Corinthians these next several days as we enter February beginning with: Love is patient. It’s tempting to isolate each of these attributes of love and feed ourselves a message of try harder. To tell ourselves that we need to will ourselves to better patience. But this way of thinking is built upon a faulty foundation, a foundation that believes we are capable of self-perfection and we’re just not trying hard enough. It’s a wearying journey. And love calls us to patience with others and also with ourselves. When we notice a lack of virtue in our lives, it’s obvious that we have…
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Finding Joy Where Heaven Meets Earth
Each time I’ve sat down to reflect on joy this season, I’ve been forced to face just how disconnected I’ve become from living a joy filled life. I blame adulthood, but I know it’s much more complex than that. Perhaps it’s not so much adulthood, but the constant preoccupation that tends to accompany adulthood. The responsibilities feel never ceasing and a lack of organization has me constantly feeling that I’ve forgotten something terribly important. I do miss the carefree spirit that often accompanies childhood and that we so often perceive as joy. Children are some of the very best examples I know when it comes to presence in the moment…
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An Invitation to Peace of All Sorts
Every year when the peace week of the Advent season comes around, I find myself overwhelmed with gratitude for its impeccable timing. Every year, I find that I need its reminders a little bit more. The longing for peace runs deep. And what I find so comforting is that though year to year it’s different what threatens to steal away this gift of peace, the gift remains greater than our circumstance time and time again. This week I read this passage in Luke (which I always hear in the voice of Linus from the Charlie Brown Christmas special) and I meditated on what exactly was meant by this peace that the angels…
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Hope That is Greater Than Circumstance
It’s our first Advent with a little one and as such it’s meant that our Advent rhythms have had to be a little more flexible, but we have still been striving to embrace the quiet moments as they come, lighting mental candles as our arms busy themselves with snuggling this little one close. I’ve been meditating on hope, peace, joy and love this season…though not always on their “designated weeks”. They’ve each been pillars that I have needed in large doses this year. Today offered me the gift of some quiet moments, as Graham quite enjoys napping on me. While sometimes I wish I could place him in the crib…
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On the Importance of Creativity
Creativity tends to immediately stir up thoughts of arts and crafts, glitter and glue, paper and paints, but it’s really so much more than that. More than just a matter of fine arts, creativity is where the physical, spiritual, and cognitive realms all meet and mingle. It fuses together so many of our experiences as humans and awakens something in us that makes us feel alive. I was fortunate to grow up in a household where creativity of all sorts was encouraged: Music was appreciated and made. There was plenty of time and space for crafting, imaginative play, writing, baking, nature, etc. A few years back, I sat with my…
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A Color Study in Yellow
This month we explored the cheerful color yellow. Soft butter. Singing canaries. Sunshine. Daffodils. Cheery sunflowers. Caution. Happiness. Tart lemons. Dandelions. Taxis. Cheese. There is no ‘right’ way to do this. It’s play and discovery and celebration of the gift of color. But these are some resources that we enjoyed through the process. For us, the transition to studying a new color usually begins here, with the yellow discovery tray. YELLOW DISCOVERY TRAY I hang bunting made from paint chips, tape, and string. I gather up all of the predominantly yellow board books we own and place them on the bookshelf beside this tray which we then fill together via…
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Introduction to Color Studies
When Graham turned four months old, we began to explore color together. It had nothing to do with speeding up his ability to identify and sort specific colors. It was simply about him discovering colors one by one and delighting in all the wild and wonderful places we find them in the world. I have plans of returning to and cycling through these color studies for a few years as he grows, suiting the objectives at each time for whatever stage of development he happens to be in. But mostly, we’re discovering. We’re exploring. We’re playing. And it’s a joy. I wasn’t expecting to find such enjoyment in the rediscovery…
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31 Questions for a New Year
Each year, I find myself a little overwhelmed in both the best and worst sense by the prospect of a New Year. I postpone any sort of new year/old year contemplation until after Christmas, which leaves me exactly one week to recenter for the upcoming year. It’s uninspired and hurried and not nearly thoughtful enough to encourage any sort of lasting change. Hence why some people have become aggressively “anti-resolutions”. And while in my experience, I have had little success with traditional resolutions, I do find that the fresh beginning of a new year provides a unique energy to reset my mind, body, and spirit. It’s important to have pillars…
