The  three things I SWORE I would never do: drive a minivan, live in Charlotte, and become a minister. Although I'd rather not admit the minivan part, I guess I was wrong.  Between serving as an Associate Pastor at Selwyn Avenue Presbyterian Church( (PCUSA), and  striving to be the 'good enough' Mom… to these Irish twins, Joe (9) and Maeve (8), we are barely holding on over here. Fine with me,  as far as I am concerned, life is better when the lines are all blurred…  Messy as it is, we are all in this together.

On Writing 

When I was ten years old, my mother gave me a diary with a lock. It is tucked  away in my closet amongst several other completed journals hidden in shoeboxes. That same year, I embarked on a life long career of running. I ran competitively through college and now consider running a spiritual discipline, kept sacred by routine and prioritization. Like running, writing in many ways is as necessary to me as breathing. Without it, I feel stagnant and disconnected to that still place where I am able to hear God’s voice. The Rainspace. 

Ordering my writing steps to the rhythm of God’s voice, is sometimes difficult. Turning inward to write in a journal is personal prayer.  Yet turning outward with the pen provokes a commitmtent to being vulnerable and available in community.  Except for our family photo (thank you Abbe McCracken), these are also my photographs, a luxury of space and time… when the ole' Nikon makes the trip. 

““I seek to speak to you, in some way, as your own self. Who can tell what this may mean? I myself do not know, but if you listen, things will be said that are perhaps not written... this will be due not to me but to the One who lives and speaks in [us] both...”
”
— Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey Mountain