I’m outside working from our balcony today. Like last week, the breeze is cool and fall feels here for real. When I was in Italy this summer one of my fellow pilgrims shared a blessing they received in Canterbury at the outset of their journey. A piece that has stuck with … Continue reading When You Hear the Birds
This week I’ve been transcribing interviews and sifting through photos from my time in Italy. I wrote this post right after I got back but had other things I wanted to share in those first few weeks of being home. Now seems like a good time to return to some of the things I experienced … Continue reading The Journey Home
When I was on pilgrimage in Italy this summer, something surprised me: I found myself craving plateaus. There is a hike here in Virginia that I have done a couple of times called Crabtree Falls. It is up, up, up for 2 miles. A series of switchbacks and stairs to the top of a waterfall. … Continue reading Learning to Love Plateaus
Nick tells me when he was little, he had a pair of gerbils. Every night they would go to work, shuffling around their cage rearranging their wood chips. He would wake up each morning and find a new masterpiece. Sometimes he would find a huge hill piled up on one side, other times there would … Continue reading My Husband Thinks I’m A Gerbil
I’ve been home from Italy for a week now, and I’m slowly finding the words to share what it was like to meet a group of pilgrims and journey with them. In the wake of such a formative experience, I’m finding that slow is how I want to go. I want to slow down, to … Continue reading Slow Steps: Leaning into a Posture of Pilgrimage
In our wedding we asked our friends and family, witnesses to our marriage covenant, to sing The Servant Song, by Richard Gillard with us. Nick requested this song during the ceremony planning, and I fell in love with the words immediately. (Full disclosure: I did change one word below from his original: “family” was “brothers.”) … Continue reading We Are Pilgrims on a Journey
lamplight stories 