Increasingly, these days, I find myself crying “Lord, have mercy.” I no longer find it very helpful to distinguish whether the emphasis of my cry is for me or for another. Somehow, as I get older, I find the veil between others and myself gets thinner. I ache for marriages that are so terribly difficult—so… Continue reading The Splendor of Grace
Category: Archives
My blogs from the early 2000’s until we moved back to Minnesota in 2017.
Mary’s Path
Her story began in earnest with a clarion call from an angel. “Don’t be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God.” But not too many chapters in, the plot got more complicated. An old man in the temple recognized this unique family for who they were, rejoiced that the Lord has allowed him “to see thy salvation” and then… Continue reading Mary’s Path
Light unto My Path
As a young child of the 60’s, I loved the “Sword Drills” in my Baptist Church. We would grasp on to our Bibles with tense expectancy until the teacher would call out a verse to find. And off we would go, scrambling to find the golden page that won us points, a certain amount of notoriety, and, at… Continue reading Light unto My Path
Grace is a Person
It shifted in a moment. Heaven made robes for earth. An animal was killed and skinned, and its blood saturated the earth. The skins were handed to two people who suddenly knew too much about vulnerability and nothing but a dim reminder of the innocence with which they began that day. They were terrified. But the Lord God had… Continue reading Grace is a Person
Trinitarian Wisdom
Yesterday I was talking informally with a thoughtful friend about a number of contemplative contemporary Christian writers, particularly women, whose writings appear to have begun in a place of Christian orthodoxy, but morph somewhere inthe middle. Because I self-identify as a contemplative Christian woman, committed to embodying godly wisdom in the everydayness of life, I… Continue reading Trinitarian Wisdom
Mountains, Valleys and Deserts
And I was wondering if you had been to the mountain,Looked at the valley below;Did you see all the roads tangled down in the valley?Did you know which way to go?Well, the mountain streams run pure and clearand wish to mv soul could alwavs be hereBut there's a reason for livin' way down in the… Continue reading Mountains, Valleys and Deserts
Hope and Sloth
I have been deeply imbedded in the sin of sloth this past week. No, this blog is not a confession, although it certainly could be. I have been teaching on hope and its opposite, sloth--that most invisible and most pervasive of sins in our contemporary context. One of the issues surrounding sloth is questioning why… Continue reading Hope and Sloth
Rollercoaster on a Wave: Part 2
The rocky northern Atlantic coast, while majestic, is not a swimmer’s paradise. The rocks on the “open side” are particularly high and jagged, and the water that crashes against them is deadly cold. On Monhegan, an island off the coast of Maine, no one who has fallen into the icy water on the open side of the island has ever… Continue reading Rollercoaster on a Wave: Part 2
The Wisdom of a Scribe
Today I had two encounters about speaking the truth in love. In both conversations the parties were wrestling with the burden of carrying wisdom that others were not yet ready to hear. What is the good of wisdom if it is not immediately transferable? We read Jesus’ brief parable: “Therefore every scribe who has been trained for the kingdom of… Continue reading The Wisdom of a Scribe
Orchestral Joy
During my college years at Bethel College we performed Handel’s Messiah, Mendelssohn’s St. Paul, Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors and the Fauré Requiem. In the end, we always performed our choral works with orchestral accompaniment. But first came the rehearsals where I, as the rehearsal accompanist, attempted to approximate the glory of orchestral majesty squeezed into eighty-eight… Continue reading Orchestral Joy
Carla Waterman 