There are words that hang in the air. Some words dissipate like vapor, but others linger, their full force felt weeks, months, or even years later as they settle in our minds and hearts. It’s the words that stay, the words that settle, the words that transform us that are the subject of Given. Given…
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When Weaving Becomes a Lens for Seeing Life
We cannot escape the reality that our identity—the fabric of our being—is very much made up by those who are woven into our lives. And many of the threads knit into us are not those we choose, but those that are given.
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Gardener or God? An extraordinary case of mistaken identity
Gardening isn’t an activity I typically associate with Jesus. But when Mary first encountered Jesus outside the empty tomb, she supposed he was the gardener. Is this strange case of mistaken identity accidental, or is there symbolic meaning that we shouldn’t miss?
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Too many Goodbyes: Turning Leaving into Blessing
Friends scatter grace through the ins and outs of weeks. And this friend, in particular, had been full of those daily graces that infuse joy into the routine of daily living. How do you say goodbye to a friend like that?
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Alice Neel: Painting as Encounter
Alice Neel was eighty years old when she resumed painting a self-portrait she had begun some four years earlier. In it she leans attentively forward, one eyebrow raised in critical assessment of her subject, glasses perched on her nose as if to sharpen her clarity of vision. She wields her paintbrush as a suggestion that…
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