Heart Matters Blog

My friend Melody wrote this blog on her new beginning...  The beginning is always today. — Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Thus begins a new column on a new day. I have not written a column on new beginnings before. Maybe because the phrase new beginnings is redundant! Can there be an old beginning? When you encounter a beginning a range of feelings can be felt: openness, excitement, fear, sadness, freedom, happiness…We get to choose what feeling we are going to hold on to. With each column I write I never know what the finished product is going to look like. It is an exciting adventure each time I sit down to write.I have a theme and goals for each column as well as an openness. Then I engage with the ideas and the column has begun. There are twists and turns in the process.Eventual...

Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. —Voltaire Throughout the years, it has been my habit to keep a Faith Journal. I call it a Faith Journal because what I have written on those pages... when my faith is firm and the eyes my heart are open to see the various blessings that God has touched my life with... have been the greatest source of encouragement to me when my faith is especially thin and my eyes so clouded with tears that I have a hard time seeing God's presence anywhere. As I flip through that journal, I am reminded that yes! God has walked with me through every twist and turn along life's way. He has whispered my name on the wind and touched my innermost being with beauty. He has embraced me through the hugs of friends and spoken deep into my...

When strangers walked through my front door along with a diverse mixture of people I knew, I wasn't sure how this would go. My daughter had organized this gathering, feeling strongly that those of us who are Christ-followers and also passionate about digging below the surface of what is really going on in our world, should meet. We gathered our tea and snacks and then I ushered them into a small sitting room with glass doors overlooking the lake. As we talked, the sky turned black as quickly as water going through my Keurig. At one point the man across from me got a funny look on his face as he looked past me. "It can't be that time." His wife's mouth shot open and her eyes became large buttons. I craned my neck around to look at the huge metal wall clock hanging behind me. No way it ...

 At least there is hope for a tree…if it is cut down, it will sprout again, and its new shoots will not fail. Its root may grow old in the ground and its stump die in the soil, yet at the scent of water it will bud and put forth shoots like a plant. —Job 14:7-9 Pine Trees Before straight-line winds tore through our neighborhood one summer, we used to have stately pine trees gracing the fence line of our backyard. Despite the trees determined effort to withstand the storm's fury that fateful day, several of them, looking more like the Leaning Tower of Pisa, had to be cut down. Three rather defiant pine trees managed to remain rooted in place, although they were snapped in two in the process. After all the debris was cleared away, those three broken pines stood as the only evidence of t...

I was asked to write on new beginnings for this weeks blog post and although I had a few ideas of the directions I could go I ended up wrestling with these two simple words. This left me wondering how I might best express these thoughts and a poem emerged. I hope the questions in this short poem and the overall prose will help you see the art of taking time within new beginning seasons, for what goes around comes around and Gods cycle is one of grace. New Beginning I wonder how I will read the past from this moment? Is it place or time or both? Something never lost but never again to be walked. Mine and yours and ours. I only have the past to look back on this day, this moment, new beginning. And now. And now. And now. But I do get to write it anew, from a new beginning point of view. We w...