By Laura Dobson“And Mary said, ‘My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my saviour, for he has regarded the low estate of his handmaiden. For behold, henceforth all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name…’”—Luke 1:
By JD Stillwater“What history has shown is that when you are granted a perspective bigger than the one you had been harboring, you end up thinking differently about the world. For the better.” —Neil deGrasse TysonAll I said was, “Science requires all five senses.” This gentle mentor of mine smiled
By Melissa Jeter“Whether we realize it or not, it is our woundedness, or how we cope with it, that dictates much of our behavior, shapes our social habits, and informs our ways of thinking about the world.”―Gabor Maté, in The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness and Healing in a Toxic CultureWhen I’m wo
By Amanda Udis-Kessler“So, when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your sibling has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first, be reconciled to your sibling, and then come and offer your gift.” —Matthew 5:23-24, NRSV (adapted)I enter the
By Seanan R. Holland“Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment.”—attributed to the BuddhaAviation, like many professions, has its own particular and sometimes peculiar concepts and jargon. I spent almost twenty years flying helicopters in the M
By Chrissy Bushyager“We all carry, inside us, people who came before us.”—Liam Callanan“He was just like me!” my teenage son, Kaleb, exclaimed as he wandered around the barn. We were visiting my 95-year old grandma in western Pennsylvania. Kaleb had asked if he could look around the barn and grandm
By Christin Green "I am the drum, you are the drum, and we are the drum. Because the whole world revolves in rhythm, and rhythm is the soul of life, for everything that we do in life is in rhythm."—Babatunde Olatunji, Nigerian drummer, educator, social activist, and recording artistAt every drum ci
By Jo VonRue“To see and to be seen. That is the truest nature of love.” —Brene Browncontent warning: mentions of rape and sexual traumaMy very beloved gynecologist of ten years retired suddenly and I was thrust into the search to find a new one. Pap smears are, at best, invasive and tender procedur
By Laura Solomon“Radical self-love summons us to be our most expansive selves, knowing that the more unflinchingly powerful we allow ourselves to be, the more unflinchingly powerful others feel capable of being. Our unapologetic embrace of our bodies gives others permission to unapologetically embr
By Melissa Jeter“We’ve tried to teach our brains to think better about race. But white-body supremacy doesn’t live in our thinking brains. It lives and breathes in our bodies.”—Resmaa Menakem, My Grandmother’s HandsWhen I think about the earth as a woman's body, I get angry. When I think about the
