Shiny is an interesting word. It can mean a distraction “oh look – shiny!” Or it can be something that glitters, but without substance of its own. But in its purest sense, without judgment, it is simply reflecting light.

Gathering and sharing to mark occasions is something all humans in all places and times do and have done. We gather to mark births, coming of age, marriage, births again, and eventually death. We gather in such ways as we are able.

It’s hard to know what to do with just one skein of yarn when you’re a weaver. I had just one skein of yarn hand-spun by my friend Therese…

My Grandmother died on October 31, 1957, less than a month before my own birthday. So I never actually knew the amazing woman named Mamie Sala Bollman except through the story telling of my own mother. Fortunately, I come from a long line of story tellers.

The thing about saying to someone “I’ll pray for you,” is you’d better do it right away, lest you get busy and forget. Also, when the tag line for the worship items you make is “Prayerfully Handwoven,” you’d better do that too.

“When wilt thou save the people?
O God of mercy, when?”

I woke up this morning with the song from Godspell in my head. In hours of wakefulness last night, I had gone online and saw the news. Yet another shooting yesterday. Gilroy last week, then El Paso, then Dayton.

The Christmas season is drawing to a close, a new weaving project is pulling me into Ordinary Time. I think all of our hearts are longing for some ordinary time.

The calendar tells me that it’s Ordinary Time. The green of my garden glimpsed through the blinds of my studio window, and my weaving confirm this. But the time does not feel ordinary…

The view from my loom is my small back yard - my cloister garden, I call it…

When I was a little girl, in the summer, at Vacation Bible School, we would celebrate “Christmas in July.” There would be an artificial Christmas tree, and we would make handmade ornaments…

I’ve been walking in the wilderness the last couple of weeks. Like the ancient Israelites, my mood has been alternatively despairing, angry, resolute, back to despairing. My nights have been sleepless and more than a few tears have been shed…

Doing justice, loving kindness - these are fairly easy to understand, if not always east to put into action. Walking humbly with God - this one I have struggled with. What does it mean? How to put it into action?

It was just 13 days after a gunman had opened fire in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing 11 worshippers and injuring 7 others. It was 80 years to the day after Kristallnacht.

We stopped while the security guard apologetically checked our handbags…

She had no business being there, and she knew it. By law and custom, she should be at home. Not just at home - alone. As she had been for the last 12 years…

So I’d just finished photographing the tallitot that I've been working on, when Bruce comes in with his iPad in hand to tell me that there's been a shooting at a synagogue in Pittsburgh…

I sat down to start weaving on the tallit the other night - finally! What is the appropriate prayer, I wondered, for starting to weave? Treadle, the shed raises …

Trigger warning: This story deals with sexual assault.

It was quite a week. First a few, then a flood, on our social media feeds. #metoo #WhyIdidntreport. Each story unique, and also sickeningly familiar…

Cleaning rituals are found all over the world. Although many are tied to religious beliefs - Chinese New Year, Persian New Year, Lent, Passover, Imbolc, Diwali - the ubiquity of the rituals suggests a physical, as well as a spiritual, value…