Hitting the road
Our family is leaving for Yellowstone soon (be the good Lord willing and all the rivers don’t rise again) so this newsletter will be short and sweet. A few things I’m savoring lately:
This tender poem by Ted Kooser about a father’s love: Those Summer Evenings.
Cloud Cult’s new album Metamorphosis, created from the chaos of the pandemic.
Kate Bluett’s liturgical poetry, like songs on Scripture.
Danielle Rose’s latest album, born from the grief of losing her daughter to stillbirth: Beauty Unnoticed.
Nikita Gill’s hopeful poem A Reminder from Smaller Beings.
The late Tallu Schuyler Quinn’s What We Wish Were True: Reflections on Nurturing Life and Facing Death.
Two mother-artists’ recent series: Denise Gasser’s Art After (created within the minutes until she’s interrupted by life with 4 kids) and Caitlin Connolly’s Colab with Chaos (prints started from scribbles left behind by her children).
Travel tip: if you find yourself flying Delta this summer, you can watch Amy Tan’s Masterclass on fiction, memory, and imagination for free on board. Her soothing voice (and brilliance) transported me during two days of planes this week.
Last call
To join us on pilgrimage to France in October, be sure to register by July 8th. Check out the itinerary here: Paris, Lisieux, Chartres, Rouen, Honfleur, Mont-St-Michael, Lourdes and more. Happy to answer any questions you have and praying for those who will become pilgrims with us this fall!
A final (analog) word
In the tumult and turmoil of the past few weeks, what’s saving my sanity is everything offline, everything I can’t share with a quick click and a link.
Picking warm strawberries from the garden and dusty blackberries ripening on the vine. Watching preschoolers play soccer, tumbling headlong for joy, free from worry about winning. Listening to my children learn their way back to piano after a long pandemic pause. Praying with the onion-leaf pages of my favorite Scripture. Stretching my body every morning before the world’s whirl stretches my patience. Remembering to breathe, deep and long, as a sacred practice of gratitude for the life I get in these paper-thin lungs.
What I wish for you this weekend is the deep Sabbath breath of time away, sinking back into the hands of your Maker. Whenever things feel like they’re falling apart (which they do for everyone I know right now, in one direction or another), I fling myself back into the faith that we are held by the God who promised to never leave us.
All the broken pieces, still held. A sacred, stubborn mystery, but more than enough. Joy was not made to be a crumb, so I pray you can scrounge up a few morsels of your own in these Sabbath days.
Peace,
Laura
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Find my books here: Everyday Sacrament | Grieving Together | Prayers for Pregnancy & Birth | To Bless Our Callings | Living Your Discipleship
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