Traveling is stressful and requires loads of patience.  Any seasoned traveler will attest to this.  Even the most detailed plans can go awry. Learning to accept that something will not go as expected, then adapting accordingly is the key to keeping one’s sanity. Maybe there are a few folks who actually like sitting in an […]

Mercy comes from a compassionate heart.  Henri Nouwen Three years ago, on August 3, my mama’s compassionate heart stopped beating. And still, it is impossible for the world to contain the mercy she embodied and dispensed. If she were alive, she would scoff at this. She’d see it as an undeserved compliment, and shake her […]

Moon over my driveway Last night, the moon, full and pregnant with light, pierced the cold darkness. Her luminosity beckoned me to leave the warmth of my kitchen, bundle up and come outside to linger a bit to watch the slow-moving orb make her way across the inky sky. I heeded the call, (several times, […]

Annunciation There was Is Has been And will be An everywhere Fixed And transfixed Within That point in time Wherein One single Simple Open soul Received The potency Of the creative whole. Elizabeth B. Rooney I sit in the waning sunlight on an unusually clear and warm December afternoon. My bones gratefully soak up the […]

All the beauty of this world is wet with the dew of tears.                                                                         Theodor Haecker She folds into me like a small child and rests her head on my chest. So tiny and frail she seems now. So childlike and innocent. I hug her, tight, once more and turn to climb into the passenger seat […]

My friend, Kenyan Deaconess Callen contacted me recently via whatsapp. She sent me a a photo of a woman, Virginia, we had visited together in the slums of Kawangware in August 2014 and again in 2019. Callen wrote “She is very weak. Let’s join hands praying for her.” Today, I resurrect and revise a 2014 […]

Small Things  (by Anna Kamienska) It usually starts taking shape from one word reveals itself in one smile… It’s not from the grand But from every tiny thing that grows enormous As if Someone was building Eternity As a swallow its nest Out of clumps of moments. A mother’s love often reveals itself in the […]

Deaconesses Pamela, Mary, Callen visiting Virginia in the slums of Kawangware Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty. Mother Teresa There was a time, about 15 years ago, when I set my heart on traveling to Calcutta, India, to visit the hospice established by the now sainted Mother Teresa and […]

I am always torn when I leave Kenya.  I am ready to see my family and friends in California, AND sad to leave those I love in Kenya.  I have been cared for in so many ways here. Pastor David Chuchu has been my steadfast pastor, colleague, friend, driver, organizer, cheerleader and so much more […]

Walking through endless wheat fields in Spain  2014 “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). Jesus’ words from the Gospel of John served as the epigraph of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s exquisite novel, The Brothers Karamazov, and are inscribed on […]