This is my favorite thing about seaweed: it feels so much like my neurodiverse brain.

What “toast, boast, and oath” might you offer this January?

Pause here, and be renewed and restored.

Embodying all of me is the best way I know to love the world.

Spirit and Breath, create an openness that violence has constricted.

May you be tender and gentle with yourself

As sacred beings, we hold the wisdom to know what is best for our own selves.

The solution is finding a reliable person to check in with.

Pleasure is one of the ways we know when we are free.

My dreams matter, as they are connected to the dreams of my ancestors.

Taking what we need and leaving the rest behind isn’t only a one time thing. We can do it anytime.

When I first entered the rooms of recovery, I thought I had nothing in common with the people around me.

While it may be urgent to work toward creating justice, I can’t do that unless I have a sense of calm.

The moment of asking for help is a tender moment.

If I want well-being to be my truth, I must reclaim and protect it.

Love calls me to rest when I feel disconnected

My God lives in the margins and witnesses to the broken-hearted.

Church is for helping people stay human in the face of inhumane circumstances.

My inner compass reminds me of the power we’ve been given to create a new future.

Since I was a kid, I have had a penchant and passion for my touch on my body. This was sometimes shameful, sometimes wonderful, and deeply private from fairly early on, as I received messages from family and neighbors that it wasn’t “right.” It has only been as an adult, as i have witnessed...

I experience the creative impulse as living just under the surface of the daily grind: tugging; imploring, When do we all get to sing together again?

Learning to love all of me—including the parts I used to be scared of—made the fear go away.

I take care of myself first, because I am deserving of exquisite care. I take care of myself to maintain the capacity to help others. I move and stretch my body every day. I spend time in nature, attuning my senses to the earth's wisdom. I ration my daily exposure to the news....

Years ago, I did one of those mud run obstacle races. There were eight physical obstacles on the course, but my biggest learning was that we all had a ninth obstacle.

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”...

We all have our foibles; pieces of ourselves that we both admire and occasionally revile. These gifts and struggles exist in tandem.

Pleasure reminds us to enjoy being alive and on purpose... Pleasure—embodied, connected pleasure—is one of the way we know when we are free. That we are always free. That we always have the power to co-create the world. Pleasure helps us move through the times that are unfair, through grief and...

This opening was written for two voices, as indicated below. 1: Welcome, who come in friendship who long for genuine community... 2: May you be graciously received here as your authentic self. 1: Welcome, who come in curiosity, full of questions or simply open... 2: May you embrace wonder and...

The crisis was an opportunity to learn to be fully me and love it, inner turmoil and all. I learned that strength comes from authenticity, never from perfection.

I was made this way, in this body and this skin. Like all beings, I have an inherent good that cannot be eclipsed.

We can be cheerleaders for simple joys (even when we don't share them) and compassionate about the fact that we’re all just trying to survive.

In her 1975 theological treatise Suffering, German liberation theologian Dorothee Söelle* examines the ways that suffering can knit humans beings closer together, and can draw us more fully into the process of loving. She uses the term apatheia, “the inability to suffer,” to describe the...

You matter. There is no one like you; never will be again, from the birth of the earth to its outermost end. You — an eager shout, a sacred “Yes!” that moves your flesh, your bone, your breath. You— she, he, ze, they, you are whole and okay, gracefully teaching your truth and your way. You...

"A little bit of meditation is better than no meditation. Two minutes is better than zero minutes. Consistency sends a signal to your whole system, to the divine, to the planet that you want to serve that you’re showing up, that your attention is there. Just give it two minutes on the days...

This recipe has been tweaked over time, so adjust as necessary. Sometimes it yields more servings than anticipated. Sometimes it needs a bit more of this ingredient or that. It comes from generations who have gone before me, and I've added my own flavor along the way. A Recipe for Resilience One...

Sometimes people show up fully and be with me. And sometimes they cannot, even if they really care about me and want to help.

I saw a woman surrounded by the pressures to conform to adulthood, being the adult she always wanted to be when she was a child. She was as God made her, not who everyone else wanted her to be.

It is deeply spiritual work to learn to treat ourselves with compassion; to learn to see ourselves, if only in moments, the same way we look at something or someone we find beautiful: a newborn baby, the ocean, a sunset.

Leader: Because the daily pressure of life weighs heavy on our minds, on our bodies, and on our spirits. All: We need a time of sabbath rest. Leader: Because the stresses of our culture often leave us feeling burdened and looking for hope. All: We need a time of sabbath rest....

In real life, sometimes grief looms largest in December. Sometimes there's one too many dress-ups and the gold tulle makes your legs itch. “I just needed it to stop for a minute. Next time I will take calm breaths.”

I trusted the woman at the pharmacy to be capable of hearing hard truth. Bless her wounded heart with its internalized misogyny. She just wants women to love and support each other. Thank you. Me too.

If a friend were in my situation, I would have seen their failings as human. So why hold someone to an unforgiving standard just because that someone is me?

However imperfectly I may be living this life of mine, there’s no one better at it, and there’s no one else who can do it for me.

Spirit of Compassion, remind us that our task as humans is not perfection, but faithfulness.

I’m not the same person who stood in that tattoo parlor eleven years ago. Still, I don’t for a minute regret being permanently marked with this snapshot in time, of my wounds and my hope.

An adequate Christmas would have you calm and open, taking it in, accepting whatever is. Slow it all down like you might be, in some way, attuned to the pace of the Eternal. If you need, you can fake it at first.

So much undone. So much to do. So much to heal in us and the world. So much to acquire: a meal a healthy body— a fit one— a lover a job a better job proof we have and are enough just around the corner of now. And up against it the reality of all that falls short and the limits of today. We honor...

Rest now, Rest in the peace of this moment. Be at ease. Look up at the stars, and down at the grass: Imagine the stars looking back at you over years and centuries, across oceans of empty space. Imagine the feel of the grass on your bare feet and feel it—dry and crunchy, soft and supple....

Our souls and minds need sustenance as much as our physical bodies. May we delight in the ways we find to provide this nourishment to our whole selves.

The author suggests supplementing this Time for All Ages with a PowerPoint/slide show of interesting doors and asking the kids to imagine what is on the other side of each of them... Who here knows the book The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe? Can one of the kids in the room tell me how Lucy...