The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2015 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 17,000 times in 2015. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

And coming later today, a more personalized review (that is, written by myself)…

One of the things that helped form the love bubble with my other yogi teachers-in-training up in Asheville over the summer was enduring things together–building understanding with each other, which led to great compassion and love for one another. Let me explain. Continue reading →

Over on the Covenant blog, this Thanksgiving morn, I write a bit more about Kathryn Greene-McCreight’s book, Darkness is my Only Companion, and I’m so, so grateful for those companions (especially Husband) who have kept walking in the darkness with me). (CLICK HERE)

Though I’m sleeping a lot this November (habitually a worst month of the year), I’m also seeing a lot more light than I have the last three years–and grateful for that.

(now, appropriately, I’m off to a gratitude-focused yoga class!)

Last week we heard from Pastor Alan Dyer as he brought God’s Word to us from the twelfth chapter of Mark; he challenged us with the story that’s often called “the widow’s mite”—when Jesus lifts up the example of a destitute woman quietly putting two pennies into the offering basin right next to the charity of much louder and abundant givers. Rev. Dyer wondered what it would look like for us, too, to give all that we have to God: living faithfully in small ways like the widow and like a prayerful friend Alan had made—not seeking to be noticed for our faith and actions in big, showy ways.

In the next passage, Mark 13, which we have to wrestle with today, Jesus and his disciples leave the temple for the Mount of Olives. Jesus has turned over tables and exposed the power-mongering of the temple leaders, but as he exits the doors, his companions, the disciples, can’t help but be overcome by the greatness of the building they’re leaving.

The sheer size of the temple befits the place that it holds in the imagination and spirituality of Jews in the first century. These good Jewish men, the disciples, are like tourists in the big city, gawking at the skyscrapers, eyes wide at the shiny stones. “Look, Jesus, aren’t these enormous buildings amazing? Look at what people have done!” They’re enraptured by the shiny objects; hypnotized by the bright stones.

Jesus says right back to them: “Do YOU see these big stones and impressive buildings?” “Are you really looking deeply and closely at these monuments to human achievement?” “Do you recognize what it is that you’re taking in?” “Do you see the significance of these buildings?”

Then Jesus drops the hammer: Continue reading →

When I was fifteen, I was diagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. On a bright and clear Thursday morning in October (the 31st to be exact) I woke up and couldn’t move. I remember starting to rouse myself and laughing ruefully at the thought of getting out of bed. An A+ student, oldest child, and member of the cross country team, I’d never chosen to just stay in bed before. I’d never experienced such stiffness and pain–though I vividly remember even more than a decade later that I felt no fear over my suddenly-old body. Continue reading →