Live Out Light

  I sit down to write this first draft with paper, pencil, and just my own hand and thoughts. It seems slow and clunky, but also quiet. Calming.  When I sit and write at the screen, the words tumble out in a frenzy.  Honestly, I long for the days untethered to devices, but I have forgotten how to live without them. My word of the year for 2024 was Embody.  Much has been said about our collective screen addiction. We take digital fasts or screen "detoxes", but we are up and running on that same hamster wheel chasing that dangling carrot again in no time.  Whatever your digital dopamine drug of choice: games, socials, news, videos, or even just a podcast to drown out the thoughts of your own mind; our devices have us connected to them, like an oxygen mask.   For some of us, our own bodies are taking shape to accomodate the medium by which we spend our days. Shoulders rolled inward, neck and head sliding forward.   I've seen adults with phones g...

  Who is Autumn? She comes in with splendor. A garment: satin leaves of golds and ambers, rust and maroon. She walks on acorns and pinecones. As she goes, her garment seems to age, colors fading, it dries out, ugly, delicate, then almost dust.  Is she dying? No! Now she’s a wind! A nip in the air. She calls to the birds, “Eat! And fly far from here.”  To her woodland friends, her chill thickens their fur.  “Eat” she says, “grow your coats, gather what you need. It is coming, the time for rest.” Autumn, she reminds us that we are more than the outer man that wastes away. She is God’s glorious exhale.