I’m usually grappling with fear to some extent and am sometimes nearly paralyzed by it. I’m mostly at peace, however, when engaged with present realities, such as loading the dishwasher, writing or rolling my cart through Safeway. For this reason and a few others, I genuinely enjoy most mundane tasks. But give me a few [...]

So there was another part to the ocean blessing story, and I wanted to tell it but I think I was having a bit of heat stroke last night after too many hours in the sun. My head was pounding so I had to be brief. Anna has been really struggling with church. Our community [...]

So today we blessed the ocean, which my husband thought was a wee bit ambitious–but, he said, “It might be a big ocean, but God is still bigger.” While we were praying, a few locals were fishing nearby, and frying the fish right behind us. During the blessing, we watched them tug one fish after [...]

Did I mention yet that coffee hour is a whole lot different out here on the Big Island? First of all, we have a tiny community, so we pot-luck on a few tables in the center of a large room without walls, the breezes washing through, surrounded by banana, papaya and avocado trees, overlooking the [...]

Back when I was a kid, I remember the “end of the school year syndrome,” which basically meant that it became almost unbearable to drag myself to school–the end of the year was in sight, but oh how slowly those final days would go. As a parent I seem to be affected by the opposite [...]