Life is a continuous learning experience. One of the questions I most enjoy asking older people is what life lessons they have learned along the way. It is also a question I return to often in my own heart. In Finland, when people talk about shopping, they sometimes jokingly ask each other how much “stuck”…
Tag: hope
The Great Unknown
Some years ago, while getting ready for what seemed like just another ordinary day, a breakfast television interview caught my attention. Lisa Marie Presley was speaking about music, her struggle with addiction, and the memories she carried of her father, Elvis Presley. Because Lisa Marie was born around the same time as I was, and…
Kintsugi
Kintsugi is a 15th-century Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold. The word comes from kin, meaning gold, and tsugi, meaning joinery — to join with gold. The more I think about it, the more deeply it speaks to me, because it feels like so much more than an art form. It feels like…
His Eye is on the Sparrow
During winter this year, Peter and I wandered into a little corner café in the middle of the city. I took the table by the window while he went to order, and for a few quiet moments I sat alone, watching Melbourne through the glass. Outside, the last of the autumn leaves were still clinging…
The Anchor Holds
Have you ever lived through a season when adversity arrives like a wave, then another, and then another still? Not the kind of wave that merely unsettles the surface, but the kind that rises suddenly and breaks over the whole of your life, sweeping away all sense of normality. The kind that leaves you disoriented,…
Hope
Have you ever wondered why, in the very worst moments of human history, hope so often seems to rise most clearly? It is one of life’s great mysteries. In the midst of war, natural disasters, sickness, grief, and all manner of human sorrow, when everything appears broken and the future feels uncertain, hope still finds…
The Royal Symphony
Some memories do not fade with time. Instead, they settle more deeply within us, waiting quietly until life gives them new meaning. One such memory for me is an evening at the Sydney Opera House, where Peter and I had the privilege of listening to the Sydney Symphony Orchestra perform Pictures at an Exhibition under…
Winter of Discontent
Lately I have found myself living in a season I would never have chosen, yet one I seem unable to hurry through. It has come quietly, almost unnoticed at first, and then all at once it was simply there, settling over my days, my thoughts, my body, and my spirit. The phrase “winter of discontent”…
Apples of Gold 