(a repost with some revision)

Today -- I celebrate 33 years as an ordained Episcopal priest. Reflecting on one's experience in ministry can be a risky endeavor.

My life as a priest has been unique. I'm sure almost any minister could say that! My unique experience begins with the fact that I am disabled. I have been disabled from birth. I have used an electric wheelchair since they were made available (yes, I've been around for a while!)

There were no role models for me as I prepared to be a priest. I had never seen a minister conduct a service from a wheelchair or received any pastoral care from someone who was disabled, that I was aware of. Looking back, I recognize ‘me’ –the person always ready to try something new. No one told me I couldn't be ordained, so my job was to listen to the Holy Spirit, envision what was possible, and, with confidence, help others do the same.

I planned my ordination for May 8th to correlate with the feast day for Dame Julian of Norwich. Julian was a holy woman - devoted and faith-filled. She lived in the Middle Ages during a time of plagues and war. While struggling with a life-threatening illness, she experienced a compelling and personal encounter with God. She survived the illness and personally knew the gift of health and life. When recovered, Julian vowed to live a mystic's life, sharing this gift with others.

Most of her adult life was spent in a small room connected to St. Julian's Church in Norwich, England. Like an anchor to a boat, Julian ‘anchored’ herself to this church. Through a small window from this room, she met and counseled people who came to her, offering comfort and holy wisdom to the village of Norwich and beyond. Within one room, she counseled those in need, spent hours in prayer, and put into words her insights about God's love and mercy. These writings would come to be known as “Showings - The Revelations of Dame Julian of Norwich”. It is believed that she was the first woman to have her writings published in English.

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I planned my ordination for May 8th. I have always been curious about the connection between my ordination and Julian's feast day. Being a woman and a person with a disability, my life as a priest would present unexpected challenges for me and others. As time has passed, I know my ministry has been filled with courage and grace. Courage – not shy because of my disability - I have entered doorways into churches and homes that had previously not been opened either to women or people with disabilities. Grace- all has been possible through a vision beyond my own.

Anchored in her one-room home, Julian of Norwich shared her wisdom and faith with confidence and compassion. Her story has been an encouragement and inspiration. I know something about being held in one place– anchored. From my wheelchair, I have been present to people in their joy and sorrow, prayerfully spreading God's good news.

Thirty-three years feels like more than a minute! What have I learned? I have learned there are many more questions than answers and much of our time is spent learning how to live with the questions. I have learned that while we live in a world wrought with anxiety, people long for the presence of peace – not a lot of words, but peace. I have learned that miracles do not always manifest as we might have envisioned, but miracles remain.

And I have learned the importance of gratitude.

Most importantly, I reflect each day on the wisest words ever shared by Dame Julian.

“All shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.”

We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time.

Mark Nepo. The Book of Awakening

Prayer - Mary Oliver

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just 
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Looking over my last week’s entries, I see a theme! Quiet –seems to be the word of the week.

The world is filled with noise. Especially heightened, at the moment, the noise in our lives pushes us one way or pulls us another.

So what can we do to settle the noise, what can we do to help calm the anxious energy that surrounds us? Prayer can be something one does to begin the day, to end the day, or it can be woven throughout all daily activities.

For over 10 years, I have posted an invitation for “Saturday Prayers” on Facebook. Bishop Steven Charleston began this tradition, and through it, I learned how far we can reach and be supportive of one another through a simple invitation. It was and still is an open invitation. No requirements. Welcoming all.

I began to offer “Saturday Prayers” while Bishop Charleston needed to take a leave in 2015. He was encouraging and reinforced the importance of this offering.

When I moved my blog to Substack I decided to offer the practice here as well. No pressure, just an open invitation. Same as before, a place to gather and share concerns and celebrations.

You are welcome.

I am an Episcopal priest, retired and grateful for the opportunity to host this sacred space - a chapel of sorts. This is a gathering place for all people and traditions to offer prayers of concern and celebration. It is an honor to welcome you.

Saturday Prayers - As night’s darkness moves toward dawn’s first light, you are invited to leave your prayer requests here in the comments.

Pray- with a single word.

Pray- with a single name.

Pray- with explanation or none.

No format, just an invitation to share

I will pray with you, and I know others who will join us in doing the same. As you read each prayer, please support one another by using the ‘like’ option so all may know we are praying with them.

(A New Zealand Prayer Book)

How many times have you noticed that it’s the little quiet moments in the midst of life that seem to give the rest extra-special meaning?

FRED ROGERS

It can feel like we are too overwhelmed to notice anything right now. Distractions are everywhere, filling us with information that creates anxiety and confusion.

Even for the very skilled, finding a way to rest peacefully in the moment takes more energy. It takes energy to focus. It takes energy to leave expectations behind. You know, the expectations that one should know how to do this after practicing for so long, or that one should be able to rise above the ever-present gravity of all that is happening in the world.

We live in a time like no other. There is a feeling that the calendar is moving ahead at a supersonic pace. So how do we even begin to imagine creating a moment of focus?

Imagine – that is the word. Instead of stressing over the perfect place, where perfect times of focus and regeneration can be created, relax into your imagination. When what used to feel normal now feels overwhelming, take a moment to imagine. It could be something as simple as a small flower in your yard or the cool morning breeze.

Fred Rogers offers insight into how to reduce the stress of creating the perfect environment for a peaceful moment. They don’t have to be long moments. Just something outside all the noise that offers a quiet peace.

I love the time of twilight. Either time of day (twilight can be dusk or dawn), the simple moments between the light of the sun and the gentle, dark sky filled with stars are a time of transition that has always caught my attention. There is a certain quiet as one form of light passes into another.

Nothing needs to be done for this moment to be created. As a gift for all of us who experience the complexity of today’s world, twilight is ever-present.

I am not always able to catch these moments of transition. But there are people in my life who are dedicated to meeting the sun every morning as it rises. I am fortunate to have many photos of their experience at morning twilight. When I am unable to greet it myself, I am thankful for these beautiful pictures. They create the simple Image needed for a moment within the midst of life that can help keep perspective throughout the day.

I share a few of these Photos and thank David Kanigan for his morning journey.

Find your simple moment, and I invite you to share that moment. We could all use new ideas!

All of these pictures were taken at Cove Island Park, Stamford, CT. I thank for sharing these twilight moments through his eyes.

I am an Episcopal priest, retired and grateful for the opportunity to host this sacred space - a chapel of sorts. This is a gathering place for all people and traditions to offer prayers of concern and celebration. It is an honor to welcome you.

Saturday Prayers - As night’s darkness moves toward dawn’s first light, you are invited to leave your prayer requests here in the comments.

Pray- with a single word.

Pray- with a single name.

Pray- with explanation or none.

No format, just an invitation to share

I will pray with you, and I know others who will join us in doing the same. As you read each prayer, please support one another by using the ‘like’ option so all may know we are praying with them.

I write, erase, rewrite.

Erase again, and then…

A poppy blooms

Quote: Hokusai, 1760 – 1849, Japanese painter, printmaker

I am an Episcopal priest, retired and grateful for the opportunity to host this sacred space - a chapel of sorts. This is a gathering place for all people and traditions to offer prayers of concern and celebration. It is an honor to welcome you.

Saturday Prayers - As night’s darkness moves toward dawn’s first light, you are invited to leave your prayer requests here in the comments.

Pray- with a single word.

Pray- with a single name.

Pray- with explanation or none.

No format, just an invitation to share

I will pray with you, and I know others who will join us in doing the same. As you read each prayer, please support one another by using the ‘like’ option so all may know we are praying with them.

Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God’s handwriting ~ a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in every fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.”

~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

The beauty of moments – is that you never know when you're making a cherished memory.

Moments with Millie (Millie Mestril)

These words have become a mantra for me. It is an ancient truth spoken again by a creative and ever-wise friend – many moments pass while we hurry to move through the hours and days of life. More often than not, the moments that become most cherished are discovered as we look back.

To be aware of ‘the now’ is not an easy task! It takes a discipline that requires a certain way of living when time is set apart to practice this type of awareness.

Most of us struggle to find enough hours in a day. The world spins at a speed at which we can barely balance. Even so, each moment remains unto itself.

Could there be time this day for you to practice awareness?

No time like the present…

I am an Episcopal priest, retired and grateful for the opportunity to host this sacred space - a chapel of sorts. This is a gathering place for all people and traditions to offer prayers of concern and celebration. It is an honor to welcome you.

Saturday Prayers - As night’s darkness moves toward dawn’s first light, you are invited to leave your prayer requests here in the comments.

Pray- with a single word.

Pray- with a single name.

Pray- with explanation or none.

No format, just an invitation to share

I will pray with you, and I know others who will join us in doing the same. As you read each prayer, please support one another by using the ‘like’ option so all may know we are praying with them.

“Somewhere in a garden at the half-light of day, someone spoke a name, and the world began again.”

(the Rev. Phillip Craig, St. James Episcopal, Wilmington, NC)

These were the last words in my brother’s sermon Easter morning.

They stayed with me all day. As he said them I could sense their importance. It was as if they held a kernel of Hope that my heart was ready to receive and plant deep within.

Easter is a whole day focused on Hope. Hope for something better. Hope for life. Hope for health. Hope for a safe place to belong.

These are things we long for each and every day. To wake up and realize that all of life has begun again may feel a little extreme. We always awaken to the facts from the day before. The burdens and concerns that we may carry don’t magically go away.

But in reality, there is truth to the idea of a new start to each day..

The sun rises on a new day giving us an opportunity to capture a moment of Hope. It may be seen as the crystal in your window begins to fill your room with colors of the rainbow. It may be heard as the first notes of your favorite song begins to play.

It can be a simple act, no need for many words. A second to take in the fresh air and new life given at sunrise.

A moment to imagine what it means for the world to begin again.

To have lived through the day of silent waiting. No way to care for their beloved because there was no work to be done on the Sabbath. The minutes must have felt like hours, the hours like days.

Before the sun’s light crested over the horizon, these women set out to perform the rituals after a loved one had died. They went to cleanse his body with fragrant oils and their tears.

Mary Magdalene arrived ahead of the others…

Quote: St. Paul
Image: J. Kirk Richards

“…And when great souls die,
after a period peace blooms,
slowly and always
irregularly. Spaces fill
with a kind of
soothing electric vibration.
Our senses, restored, never
to be the same, whisper to us.
They existed. They existed.
We can be. Be and be
better. For they existed.”

a day of waiting - silence can feel overwhelming
we are in a holding pattern

we know what to expect as the sun rises tomorrow

but for those who were rocking with grief for the loss of their friend and teacher, they could not imagine a rising Sun.

Night was all around. The words of new life felt far away and maybe forgotten. A whisper would come at the first glimpse of dawn.

For now, we wait together…

Quote: Maya Angelou, ‘When Great Trees Fall’

Photo:

Sometimes the path goes dark and silent,
do we turn and run,

or push ahead seeking light on the other side?

J. Richard Lessor

May we let go, and grow bright as stars in a clear, frosty night, the more we are stripped of what we thought we could not do without.

Quote: Brother David Steindl- Rast

It is an evening to consider exactly what it means to let go, to be stripped of what we thought we could not do without. In the Christian tradition, tonight is filled with painful separation.

None of us can imagine what it must feel like. To be separated from those we love. The heart pleads for release and return. We can’t imagine what this would feel like until the moment it’s before us. The disciples watched as their teacher, friend and holy one was dragged away, leaving them in shock, grief and fear.

The following days were filled with horror and deep sadness. and then a turn that shed light on all that was possible.

Alone, without the things we thought were necessary to live, may we seek signs of that light in one another. And wait..

May anxiety never linger about you.

May your outer dignity mirror an inner dignity of soul.

Take time to celebrate the quiet miracles that seek no attention.

Be consoled in the secret symmetry of your soul.

May you experience each day as a sacred gift,

woven around the heart of wonder.

Anxiety had probably lingered much longer than Jesus ever thought possible.

He received comfort where he could. And as Monday’s gospel reading from John shared, the comfort he found after entering Jerusalem was in the home of dear friends.

Martha, Lazarus, and Mary opened their doors to welcome their friend and his followers.

Food is always considered a balm. And so a table was spread.

It's possible that Mary knew the risk Jesus was taking as he entered the walls of Jerusalem. Was she telling him she knew by washing his feet with heart and soul? That precious oil and her hands were a balm.

The tension in that home eluded no one. The city’s leadership hovered nearby, gathering information here and there. Information they would use when arresting Jesus.

His own disciple, Judas, showed his dissatisfaction with Jesus’ leadership, once again. It would not be long before this disappointment and frustration would lead Judas to betrayal.

This is Wednesday of Holy Week. Today's gospel reading from John tells of a shared supper among Jesus and his disciples.

Once again, food was balm.

Breaking bread and passing a cup would become a sacred act in the years to follow. Today, we hear the words “Do this and remember me” in churches offering communion or the Lord’s Supper, and we are taken back to this shared meal.

Tension was right outside the door. Yet, Jesus knew the importance of teaching his followers how to “celebrate the quiet miracles.”

The time spent around this table together would go by quickly. Soon, the outside tension and noise would surround everyone. Remembering this meal would be understood as a gift, holy and healing.

Quote: John O’Donohue, from For Presence

“There are as many ways to pray as there are moments in life. Sometimes we seek out a quiet spot and want to be alone, sometimes we look for a friend and want to be together… Sometimes we want to say it with words, sometimes with a deep silence.

In all these moments, we gradually make our lives more of a prayer and we open our hands to be led by God even to places we would rather not go.” Henri Nouwen

I started this Lenten season with this quote from Henry Nouwen. I reflected on it as a way to begin the 40 days leading up to Easter. It felt like a call to be patient with myself as I journeyed through these days. It felt like an encouragement to find creative ways to pray, which became more creative than I could have ever imagined!

From crayons, different forms of meditation, and great conversations with other people who are disabled, I realized that I have learned a variety of ways to pray over the years. This Lent was a season to experience that variety alone and in community.

In preparation for today, Palm Sunday, I revisited my own reflections during this Lent and found myself sitting with Nouwen's quote once again. It has become the bookend to my Lent 2026.

While reading the passage about Jesus’ preparation and entrance into Jerusalem through the East or Golden Gate, I kept returning to the description of what happened after he crested the hill outside of Jerusalem. He approached the city from the towns of Bethany and Bethphage in the east. Surrounded by his disciples and celebrated by crowds raising palms and singing hosannas, Jesus stops and looks ahead at the city.

As if I had never read it before, the following verses described his emotion as he looked at the city.

He wept.

With a heart filled with compassion and sadness, Jesus anticipated the suffering that was ahead not only for himself but for Jerusalem. (Luke 19:41-44). I felt a tender ache as I read these words.

He had just been crying in front of Lazarus's tomb, again feeling the deep emotion and loss from all who had come to share in the loss. And certainly feeling his own emotion.

I can imagine him sitting on the hillside with Bethany behind him, looking out over the land toward the East Gate into Jerusalem. If the hill was high enough, he could probably get a view of the city itself. His compassion was overwhelming. His next move was daunting.

We hear of anticipated grief. We experience anticipated grief. I remember once when a loved one died, I told a friend, “I just don't want to go down the path I see before me. I can only anticipate the place grief's journey will take me.” There is nothing easy about that journey.

Grateful to have slowed down enough to take in this reading, I have sat on such a hillside today. I have looked out over my own world and taken in its fragile state. I have looked into the eyes of dear friends, making decisions the best they can as they begin their own anticipated grief due to illness and aging. Today's prayer has been a time of focus on what appears to be ahead, with a slight sense of hope and the promise of new life.

This day comes to a close. As we move into Holy Week, I will leave this hillside grateful to have found it. I will take Nouwen’s words to heart as the story unfolds this week, as I look for the places I can pray with or without words.

I am an Episcopal priest, retired and grateful for the opportunity to host this sacred space - a chapel of sorts. This is a gathering place for all people and traditions to offer prayers of concern and celebration. It is an honor to welcome you.

Saturday Prayers - As night’s darkness moves toward dawn’s first light, you are invited to leave your prayer requests here in the comments.

Pray- with a single word.

Pray- with a single name.

Pray- with explanation or none.

No format, just an invitation to share

I will pray with you, and I know others who will join us in doing the same. As you read each prayer, please support one another by using the ‘like’ option so all may know we are praying with them.