Listening to Maine Public Radio this week, I heard a report that one-third of us are carrying so much pandemic-related stress that we are tossing and turning in our beds at night, unable to sleep. While sleep comes easily to me, I too feel the weight of worry caused by the COVID-19 crisis. Exercising, eating […]

“You’re wearing two watches,” a student commented last week, noticing the brown leather bands wrapped securely around my wrist. “Actually, only one’s a watch,” I said, holding up my arm. “The other’s just a bracelet.” An author friend, Lucinda Secrest McDowell, had given it to me a couple of years ago in celebration of her […]

Nothing in my lifetime has divided American Christians like the upcoming presidential election. I’ve been getting unsolicited emails from respected Christian leaders on why it is imperative that I vote for a Democrat. On social media and in print, other equally respected Christian leaders contend that I’ll be sinning if I don’t vote for a […]

As a young person, I read the Bible because I was required to. Certain passages thrilled me, like the Apostle Paul’s treatise on love, King David’s Shepherd Psalm, and especially the King James Version of a verse in Job confirming the existence of unicorns. Unicorns! Then my mother explained that later translators understood the animal […]

It’s been six months since my family went to church. For every pre-coronavirus Sunday when I fantasized about staying in bed rather than wrangling all of us into a pew, I can’t believe how much I miss it. Sitting around our dining room table with song books and Bibles can’t compare to worshiping with others. […]

“And this is where my porch swing will go,” I told anyone and everyone who stopped by my house to check my husband’s progress on our front porch. In truth, I wasn’t sure whether a swing would fit in the narrow alcove at the end of the porch Dana was building – let alone whether […]

Friends recently held a yard sale to raise money for Chop Point school. Having just helped a family member move, I seized the opportunity to pare back some of my own clutter. In a box to donate went my great grandmother’s perfume bottles (I don’t wear perfume or collect bottles); a mini collector’s plate from […]

How we ended up housing twenty chickens in our kitchen began with a misunderstanding. When I ordered chicks, the local feed store said that twelve would arrive in early June with the rest coming a month later. While I wasn’t sure where we’d put them, at least we’d have time to prepare. Or so I […]