by Gwen | Aug 3, 2020 | Anxiety, Beauty, Challenges, Community, COVID-19, Education, Faith, Grace, Hope, Jesus, Love, Truth, Uncategorized, Unity
I read somewhere that when two people look at the world one may see hate and division and darkness while the other sees beauty, love, and light. The interesting thing is that regardless of who does the looking, it’s the same world. We get to choose how we look at it. No one else chooses for us. But our choices make all the difference in how we walk through this time. The truth is that we still have much more than we have lost. We can choose to bring our best selves to the hard, messy work of finding our way forward though this new landscape, together. We have each other and we have grace. And that is more than enough.
by Gwen | Jul 15, 2020 | America, Arkansas, Basics, Brokenness, Challenges, Church, Community, Family, Forgiveness, Freedom, Friendship, Grace, Heathcliff, Home, Hope, Jesus, Joy, Justice, Love, Marriage, Peace, Relationships, Stella, Truth, Uncategorized, Unity, weirdness
Let us be the people who decide to be different from the crowd. Let us be the movers and shakers–the leaders–who show the rest of Arkansas how it’s done. Let us reject the narrative that it has to be either/or. Let us be weird and different from the whole world if that’s what it takes to also be wonderful. We can find the courage in our hearts to lock arms and stand together on the middle ground. Some might say I’m naive, but I know we can do it. Let this be the place where reconciliation begins!
by Gwen | Jun 20, 2020 | Authenticity, Basics, Church, Community, COVID-19, Faith, Freedom, Grace, Hope, Jesus, Prayer, Unity
I’ve not been sleeping well. The further I go in this State Rep race, the more corruption I see. In my life I’ve been challenged but not often daunted by the tasks I’ve faced. Now, every day, I feel like a child with a slingshot standing in front of a fully-armed...
by Gwen | Apr 14, 2020 | Comfort, Community, COVID-19, Friendship, Home, Hope, Love, Relationships, Truth
This is a theme that’s been growing in my mind. Like those bulbs buried all winter in the dark, the other day it finally sprouted. I’d been watching people hoard, criticize, ignore, demand, and blame leaders, especially politicians. Fear and anxiety can spread across the world faster than a virus. I struggled daily trying to figure out my role, to come up with a spiritual vaccine I might offer. What could protect us from losing our better selves in the face of this crisis?
by Gwen | Sep 21, 2017 | Brokenness, Comfort, Faith, Family, Grace, Hope, Jim Ford, Love, Pain, Peace
There’s a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, the only survival, the only meaning. Thornton Wilder I was nine months pregnant with my first baby when Granny died. Earlier in the evening I stood beside the hospital bed where...
by Gwen | Apr 28, 2017 | Devotions, Education, Family, Grace, Gratefulness Project, Gwendolyn Brooks, Home, Hope, Iran, Jesus, Joy, Justice, Margaret Atwood, Marjane Satrapi, Social justice, Students, Thankfulness, Uncategorized, Writing
Every day I leave the Triple F Ranch to enter the world of academia. In academia I spend a lot of energy in conversations about language, perception, and communication. I do a lot of critical thinking. In between classes I take forays into my writing life where I think about poverty, and justice, and hope and Jesus (and coffee and kids and fiction and memoir and Guideposts devotions). And sometimes I come home with a headache.
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