"God is offering an invitation. A call to waiting. The spiritual life isn't the quick and easy religion we're accustomed to. It's deep and difficult- a way that leads into the vortex of the soul where we touch God's transformative powers. But we have to be patient. We must trust that our scarred hearts really do have wings."

"What has happened to our ability to dwell in unknowing, to live inside a question and coexist with the tensions of uncertainty? Where is our willingness to incubate pain and let it birth something new? Creativity flourishes not in certainty but in questions."

Summer is quickly heading out in Minnesota. It makes me a bit nervous because my big "summer project" isn't quite finished yet. I've been working on painting the outside of our house. It took much longer than I thought to prepare it for painting and then we took a painting experiment/detour that could have been a disaster. I thought I had picked out a neat tan/khaki color. Let's just say when it was applied to the house it looked not unlike what you might see in the gutter of a cow barn or on the floor of a chicken house. Depending on the lighting- it ranged from diarrhea yellow to Montezuma’s revenge brown- with an indescribable green in the mid-range. Going against all the advice and whining from Brendan and Brian to keep this nauseating color, I went out a bought a very safe, stoic, respectable and sanitary, all be it, boring Granite Gray. I can’t tell how much better I feel (both physically and emotionally) painting with this gray. I have been putting up with a lot of hassle from the guys though and listening to them mumble on about something along the lines of “prison gray, projects gray, sanitarium gray”. I think they just want to get out of helping…

  A BOUQUET OF MONARCH CHRYSALIS

I have found times of stillness, darkness and surrender are the times of greatest transformation.

 I would like to introduce to you the noble, courageous, gallant, heroic, fearless, and valiant warrior dog Sir Charles !