From “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation” by Parker J. Palmer My youthful understanding of “Let your life speak” led me to conjure up the highest values I could imagine and then try to conform my life to them whether they were mine or not. If that sounds like what we […]

From “Trust the Whisper: How Answering Quiet Callings Inspires Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Grace“ by Kathy Izard I know there has been and will continue to be skepticism around spirituality. It is the very essence of faith to believe without evidence. But when I started paying attention, listening to those whispers and connecting the God

From “What Makes You Come Alive: A Spiritual Walk with Howard Thurman” by Lerita Coleman Brown Dr. Howard Washington Thurman was born on November 18, 1899, near Palm Beach, Florida. Shortly after his birth, his family moved to Daytona Beach, Florida, where Howard spent his early years with his parents, two sisters, and maternal grandmother,

From “Discernment: Reading the Signs of Daily Life” by Henri Nouwen with Michael J. Christensen and Rebecca J. Laird What I learn from testing a call in Latin America is that my broader vocation is simply to enjoy God’s presence, do God’s will, and be grateful wherever I am. The question of where to live

From “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success” by Carol S. Dweck, PhD Believing that your qualities are carved in stone – the fixed mindset – creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character – well, then you’d

From “Listening to Your Life: Daily Meditations with Frederick Buechner” by Frederick Buechner The alphabet of grace is full of sibilants – sounds that can’t be shouted but only whispered: the sounds of bumblebees and wind and lovers in the dark, of whitecaps hissing up flat over the glittering sand and cars on wet roads,

From “The Discipline of Inspiration: The Mysterious Encounter with God at the Heart of Creativity” by Carey Wallace Where do you get your inspiration? Artists hear this question all the time. Some of us respond with pat speeches. Some of us give the most sincere answers we can. Some of us lapse into sullen silence,

From “Wired to Lead: Being the Leader the Church Didn’t Think You Could Be” by Suzanne Nadell When I was in college in the 1990s, there were female Bible majors, but the number of female leaders teaching or administrating there were slim. I spent most of my college years seeing the girls around me scrambling

From “The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action” by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson Other cultures work from an assumption that relationships and community are foundational for understanding reality and human development. The African concept of Ubuntu, for instance, often shared by the late Bishop Desmond Tutu, has the core assumption that “a person is a

From “Walk with Me: A Journey through the Landscape of Trauma” by Ellen Corcella Their son, John, was still a toddler when their marriage ended in divorce. I often picked up John to spend weekends with me, my sister working six days a week to set up a boutique chocolate and gift store in downtown