Letting go is not the end. Perhaps it is the beginning of something even more beautiful. August 2026 will not soon be forgotten, but not for the way we thought or planned. August has given us a gift…a gift of letting go. Letting go of plans that had been in the making all year. Letting go of a vision of how things were "supposed" to unfold. Letting go, more than once, through pain, through sorrow, through change none of us chose or would have chosen. Maybe you know this kind of August, too...

It is the evening of July 3rd...I am sitting on my deck watching and listening to my girls laugh and chat as they play pickleball on our backyard court. Airplanes are coming and going from the little city airport nearby, cars are revving their engines far away for the Friday night cruise, someone somewhere is lighting off fireworks, and the neighborhood bald eagle is circling and soaring above with its eye on something down below. It is remarkable to pause and consider the gift of living in a...

"Send forth your spirit, they are created and you renew the face of the earth" ~ Psalm 104:30 Fifty days after Easter, the Church pauses in something like holy astonishment. The disciples had been waiting behind closed doors with uncertain hearts…and then the room filled with wind and fire, and nothing was ever the same again. Pentecost is not just and one and done historical footnote. It is an ongoing event. The same Spirit who rushed into that upper room is rushing still, looking for open...