“He has shown you, O man, what is good. And what does God require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8   Kindness is, according to www.inspirekindness.com, “being selfless, caring, compassionate and unconditionally kind. Like love, it takes practice to understand and feel it. We […]

Patience is not a characteristic that we often associate with children, particularly not children in 2022. One of the reasons for this is that many of us no longer teach children HOW to be patient; probably because it takes a fair bit of time and patience on the part of the parents, both of which […]

A couple of weeks ago, in the mindfulness exercise on peace, we imagined we were in a room with a small puppy. We wanted the puppy to come sit in our lap. For that to happen, we needed to become very calm, to slow ourselves down far enough that the puppy wouldn’t just come play […]

When I think about awakening joy, I must say, self-control is NOT the first thing I think about. In fact, it would be pretty far down the list. But James Baraz made me think of it differently.   The book I’ve been using for these messages, Awakening Joy, is mostly a book about mindfulness. “Mindfulness […]

When I was a little girl peace meant the absence of war. As I got older, I learned that there are many ways people use and sometimes misuse the word peace. Peace means different things in different parts of the Bible too. Sometimes peace does mean the absence of war. Sometimes it means Shalom – […]

When we think about generosity we usually think about “things” today I’d like you to open that definition up a bit. We also usually think about being generous with others, today I’d like you to open that up a bit too and include you being generous with yourself as well as others.   James Baraz’ […]

Pentecost is so big, such an amazing mystery that I decided to devote the next several blogs to the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I was surprised to find that there is a controversy regarding how many fruits of the Spirit there are!   In Galatians 5 nine fruits are listed, though in many other […]

This week’s blog is brought to us by Traci Smith and her Faith at Home newsletter.   Read Newsletter   Traci explains in her article, Pentecost is a celebration of the Holy Spirit, a day we set aside to appreciate all the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the Church that grew from that first experience. […]

What do you think joy looks like?    I think joy looks like bubbles or balloons among other things. We’ve talked that before – joy looks airborne… like you’re jumping up as high as you can go because you can’t help it. You want to know something funny? Joy wasn’t always like that, un-uh. Joy […]

GPC parent, Natalie Jorges-Castellanos did an awesome job of illustrating sharing joy by talking about a birthday party. She asked the kids what each one liked the best about a birthday party. They said things like balloons, cake, games, party hats and finally presents.    Natalie then told a story about a girl she had […]