Category: good for the soul

Posted on

by the water

collecting crabs

When my husband and I took a leap of faith a few years ago and disrupted our lives to take an early retirement, we moved to coastal Alabama and built a little cottage on Mobile Bay — the Bay of the Holy Spirit!

Let me just say that original name is everything.

This adventure has brought us new friends, new experiences, and, among other things, a crazy collection of animals visiting us. I’ve become quite adept at catching just about anything in a crab trap instead of crabs. That’s part of my story here.

Joyful Adventures

My mornings definitely involve coffee. and absolutely involve a little quiet time in prayer and journaling. Both go perfectly with the rising sun over the bay and the sounds of birds waking up. I’m afraid I bore social media followers with too many morning sunrise pictures, so I quit doing that, but let me assure you the sun still rises. Every day.

Those quiet morning hours have brought me quite a bit of entertainmentment. I’ve rescued turtles who’ve fallen into the pool, stepped on a copperhead, watched dolphins swim up and down the bay, caught catfish off the pier, scared away jack rabbits and raccoons, chased squirrels away from my tomatoes, mistaken a coyote for a really ugly mangy dog, watched a shark circle its prey before disappearing under the surface, photographed an alligator staring at me, and scratched my head when a wild boar washed up dead on our little beach. Who needs Animal Planet?

But nothing, nothing has brought me as much joy as the crab traps. That’s a lot to say because I am allergic to crabs. I’ve caught dozens of crabs, nearly all of them given away. But I’ve also caught a speckled trout, a shrimp (it wiggled out when I pulled up the trap), and just yesterday, a baby stingray.

I’ve caught a little faith, too. Well, maybe a lot of faith. I’ve learned a little something about myself and how grace flows through my life as easily as the tides move before my eyes. I’ve learned about hope, too, and that has come as a surprise. Every day I walk to the end of the pier and sit on the end to pray. Then I pick up the traps to take a peek inside. It is always with anticipation. Even if I haven’t baited the traps, I still pull them up out of the water hoping to see some little critter in there. Sometimes they are empty, sometimes not, but always I have this joyful anticipation that I’ll find something there. More often than not, I do have a surprise. And when I do, it’s shared — remember I can’t eat crabs.

Fishers of Men

Isn’t that what the Apostles did? Jesus went to find his Apostles among fishermen. Men who already knew and lived the meaning of hope and joyful anticipation. What fisherman doesn’t cast his rod with hope? And pull up his line with joyful anticipation?

 They became fishers of men with hope in the Lord. In my own little way, on the end of a small pier, I feel called to do the same. Every day begins with hope and joyful anticipation.

Jesus, I trust in you!

Posted on

Quiet the Noise

This morning after an appointment in town, I took my journal to the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception to have a little quiet time with the Lord. While there is no exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the middle of the morning on a random Wednesday, Jesus is certainly present in the Tabernacle and, I’m sure, welcoming a visit.

The Cathedral is always open during the day, and a lovely retreat from the activity of a busy town center. I was looking forward to the soothing silence.

Instead, I encountered a crew of workers cleaning the spacious window by the altar. There is a huge restoration project going on, and the stained glass windows are looking beautiful. The restoration, however, requires a mess and a bit of chaos first — as evidenced by the noise in what I thought would be a prayerful and silent retreat for me.

You have to crack a few eggs to make an omelet, I suppose.

The noise was not distracting at all. On the contrary, it became a little bit of white noise as I went deeper into prayer until it finally disappeared from my conscious awareness. It was only when I started to journal that I became aware of the noise again.

I had gone to the Cathedral to seek silence, and I found it in the Lord. He quiets the turmoil, the chaos, the noises that distract me from Him. I was grateful to experience this literal expression in order to really see with my eyes or rather, with my ears, what my heart already knew:

“Thou hast made us for thyself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it finds its rest in thee.”

~St Augustine of Hippo

Posted on

Rest. Relaxation. Recreation.

Just another afternoon.

When you’re retired, every day can seem like every other day, but the truth is, I’ve never been busier. And that “retired” mess is a lie. I’m still working. I’m teaching online courses, and I’m trying to keep up with some writing. I’m on a couple of local committees that demand an awful lot of time from me (in a good way), and I travel a bit giving talks and retreats.

My to do list is longer now than when I was working full time and had kids at home.

Come out and play

When a friend called to get me out of the house and into some fresh air, I jumped at the chance. We had an adventure at a friend’s horse farm. It was the perfect distraction, and the perfect afternoon in the country.

Because of my husband’s illness, we’ve done a lot of research on the importance of blue space. Apparently, living near water is good for your mental health. I’ll take it! Most of you have seen my sunrise pictures from the bay.

But green space is also good. I love to get out to the rolling hills and see trees, and flowers, and beautifully mown acres of land. The horse farm was the perfect spot.

Cue William Wordsworth

As an English major, I feel like I can come up with a story or a poem for any event, and “The World Is Too Much With Us” captures today’s mood perfectly.


The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune ….

That first part of the poem laments the mess we’ve created for ourselves in a consumer-driven world where everything is about materialism and getting and getting while wasting the beauty of the natural world. Although written around 1802, this poem resonates with me today. I’ve been guilty of watching “nature” programs on tv instead of going outside. What a statement of the times.

I’m blessed to have friends who can execute the occasional intervention.

God’s creation

The pull nature has on me is part of the natural order of things, an opportunity to worship God in his creation.

Nothing exists that does not owe its existence to God the Creator. The world began when God’s word drew it out of nothingness; all existent beings, all of nature, and all human history are rooted in this primordial even, the very genesis by which the world was constituted and time begun. (CCC 338)

I am reminded of this miracle when I get away from the man-made distractions that disconnect me from the beauty of creation. It is an opportunity to breathe. To stretch. To admire and praise the Lord God who made me and this beautiful landscape from the smallest blade of grass to the majestic trees that dot the landscape.

Pin It on Pinterest