July 25, 2021 The only way to have a friend is to be one. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Can you remember a special friend from childhood? I was fortunate enough to have a few childhood friends who waited for me by the school gates in the morning, and played long hours with me during the …
July 18, 2021 Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one …
July 11, 2021 To be native to a place we must learn to speak its language. ― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass My family just spent a long weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks. We have a small house directly on the lake that has belonged to my family since my dad was a …
July 4, 2021 We have to create miracles. A miracle is not the intercession of an external divine agency in violation of the laws of physics. A miracle is simply something that is impossible from an old story but possible from within a new one. It is an expansion of what is possible. — Charles Eisenstein …
June 27, 2021 I like to think of motherhood as a great big adventure. You set off on a journey, you don’t really know how to navigate things, and you don’t exactly know where you’re going or how you’re going to get there. Cynthia Rowley We recently visited Des Moines, IA for my oldest son’s …
June 20, 2021 My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, ‘You’re tearing up the grass.’ ‘We’re not raising grass,’ Dad would reply. ‘We’re raising boys.’ –Harmon Killebrew As Father’s Day approaches I have really enjoyed recalling times when my dad played with me …
June 13, 2021 Going barefoot is the gentlest way of walking and can symbolise a way of living – being authentic, vulnerable, sensitive to our surroundings. It’s the feeling of enjoying warm sand beneath our toes, or carefully making our way over sharp rocks in the darkness. It’s a way of living that has the …
June 6, 2021 Woodland Rain A story and a song by Jaimmie Stugard, Director of LifeWays Early Childhood Center in Milwaukee, WI It was a cool, early spring day. All of the woodland creatures were out at play. Mother bunny led her little baby bunnies – hippity, hoppity, hippity, hoppity – through the wood. While …
May 30, 2021 Resilience is more complex than simply popping up again. -Joan Almon This past “year and some months” was HARD for many people. Parents, faced with the task of raising their young humans without the expected support systems, certainly felt the struggle. According to a new study led by researchers from the University …
May 23, 2021 All real living is meeting. – Martin Buber The Whisk from Cynthia Aldinger, founder of LifeWays North America Malls are not my thing. Actually, shopping is not my thing. It was not something I missed when the government began restricting human encounters. However, there was something I missed, had been missing …
