Day 34, Week 5: Gathering Fruit of Concern for the World from Your Spiritual Garden: Tending to the Presence of God If you remove the yoke from among you, the pointing of the finger, the speaking of evil, if you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of…
Hello is becoming a generous, living prayer in me. Waking up to the present time in order to be a welcoming presence to myself and others is an act of hospitality, and at times, a bumpy path of mystery and emergence. My son died nearly ten years ago, when he…
“Doing nothing is sometimes doing something,” wrote Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. “To meditate is not to run away from life but to take the time to look deeply into ourselves or into a situation. Meditation is an opportunity to take care of our body or mind. That is…
Listen: A Seeker’s Resource for Spiritual Direction, April 2015, 9.2 –Pegge Erkeneff, 2014 Awaken! The time is now for each of us to become fully alive to the remarkable experience of living, in spite of heartache and messiness, stagnation, and lack of vision or resources. We must each wake up…
I’m celebrating the Twelve Days of Christmas, thinking about present time, and made a list of 12 practical life learnings–gifts–gleaned from what I’m calling my silent years, 2009-2012. Why the list? I moved to Alaska in 2007, and with the assistance of the sturdy and wild landscape, hibernated. I am…
A young person, mid-twenties, whom I accompany as a soul-friend asked, “You’re saying it’s possible I’m good enough just the way I am? That’s hard for me to believe. How come we never hear that message?” That conversation was two years ago during a telephone spiritual guidance exchange. I have…
Some days, sorting marbles sheds light on essential questions. Smooth handfuls of glass slipped firmly against each other in my hands. Water streamed from the kitchen faucet. I washed and rinsed my favorite colors in a stainless steel strainer, playing with texture and light. The marbles had been supporting stalks…
The night before my son died, I opened mail, standing in the kitchen. My boy sat at a round table, watching. Soup heated on the stove. I had worked all day, and needed to attend a class later that evening. He had stayed home from high school, sick with the…
“One Mother’s Dream” –Pegge Bernecker (c) For as long as I can remember, I dreamed of holding a baby. When I was a child she was an infant sized doll. If I could sit still, I was allowed to hold my baby sister, then three years later, my brother. In…
Around ten pm, a few days before Christmas, I sat cross-legged gazing through the burnished glass of a wood stove. Heat rippled toward my face. Flicking flames evoked emotions and memories: a needlepoint Santa stocking for a boy who no longer lives, the ending of a marriage I held precious,…