Our family has been experimenting with digital minimalism. Aaron left social media a year ago and I’ve been taking more frequent and longer breaks from Facebook and Instagram in the past few months. Almost as long as we’ve been married, we’ve deactivated or signed off of Twitter and Snapchat, and haven’t downloaded TikTok or any…
Most days at I try to get out and walk around our neighborhood. Our suburban town has a nature trail I sometimes walk but other days I opt for the sidewalk that takes me by rows of older homes, bits of main street, and some historical remnants of what used to be Salem. Even with…
In our corner of the world we are working remotely, staying home, and slowing down in hopes to slow the growth of COVID19 cases. The first week or so was new and sort of exciting but by now it’s set in that life will continue to look different in the coming months. I’m sure we…
How were you taught to pray? I wasn’t so much directly instructed on how to as much as I watched how others prayed at church, before meals, and often before class. Spontaneous prayer was a frequent choice and sometimes the Psalms were used. People usually spoke from their heart and used common phrases of gratitude…
Spiritual direction (SD) is a term for something we look for all the time: companionship. In various forms, companionship is essential for physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual flourishing. Isolation in any season of life, such as a period of transition, parenting, grief or illness, or evolving faith, can be painful. Spiritual direction is a formal…
For someone like me who grew up in a non-denominational, charismatic church, the Episcopal church*, along with other denominations, were synonymous with secular culture. I wasn’t totally sure what they believed. Do they believe in grace? Are they spirit-filled? What do they really think of Jesus? In 2015 I moved from a moderately sized, non-denominational…