Ever since I was a very little girl, I have been greatly annoyed by gender stereotypes. I would be more upstanding, I know, if I said that I was annoyed by stereotypes in general, about race, religion, and so on, but this would not be the truth. Gender stereotypes in particular grate on my ne...

As I read the scholarship about the concept of sacred, I find my ability to understand the term in a way that could be accepted by different cultures or even the multiple groups within a culture more and more difficult. It does not take long to realize the complexity of the subject. I grew up a...

I had a few questions on my mind for a while. What is a sacred place? What makes it sacred? This can only be answered by the individual. What I find sacred another may not. I thought about not writing about home as sacred because not everyone has the sanctity of a home. There have been tim...

As I sit and compose this blog post for Liz Warren’s Sacred Storytelling class, I can’t help but wish for the divine revelation, the inspiration and guidance that seems to be a part of the sacred storytelling tradition. After all, it is All Saint’s Day. As a former Catholic, I know...

My husband gives me anything that has the word “story” in it. A few weeks ago, he told me about a pod cast that puts people to sleep. It’s called Sleep with Me. The host is Drew Ackerman. Mr. Ackerman says he got his start when he and his brother used to tell each other stories to put themselv...

It has been a long week and a half. Unknowingly so until today. For two consecutive Mondays, I accompanied my mother’s sister, my Aunt, to medical appointments here in Phoenix. Concerns with her memory. Now mind you, my Aunt is 83 years old and the most active of individuals. Seemingly sharp an...

I have been thinking of the 2016 Presidential Election and have recently read an article in Time Magazine with the title, “A distressing summer of workplace sexism reminds us how far we have to go.” How will the election affect women in the place they work? My mind wandered to an earlier time....

One of the readings I did for class was from Inviting the Wolf In: Thinking About Difficult Stories, by Loren Niemi and Elizabeth Ellis. They write that there are three basic principles that make up the foundation for the telling of difficult stories: trust, permission, and ownership. I consi...

I am the legal guardian for my friend, Jackie Geiler, who turned 93 years old this May. I am often asked, “is Jackie is a blood relative, were we family friends, or what?” It’s simple, I answer, Jackie was once my boss for a whole year. That’s it. In 1979, the director at Decatur Area Arts Co...

“The divine is in the ordinary.” I cannot remember who drilled this statement into my psyche, but it resurfaced while thinking about defining what exactly is a “Sacred Story.” The divine is in the ordinary. I like that statement. Can I live my day with an openness to see the divine in the ...

We are asked to look back. Peel the layers. Find an image. Breathe and invite in our soul. Capture the moments that have inhabited our time. Einstein describes time as “a continuum, without any beginning or end.” Time holds the key to our stories. “Remember the time that…”, “I can remember a ti...