Seeking Authentic Voice

 I have traversed familar terraine over the last week or so. I mean, places I most recently lived in for 12 years. But also Chicago and it nearby suburbs, where I lived for over 40 years. Chicago really is home for me. Even though it is no longer where I live. Enjoying a meal at La Pita, Dearborn.  Enjoying a Yemeni coffee (cardamon and heavy cream in delicious coffee) The train trip from Dearborn to Chicago, on Amtrak, was uneventful. We even arrived about 15 minutes early. The Metra commuter train trip from Chicago to Evanston was also uneventful. I arrived at my hotel a little after noon and had to wait a bit for a room to be ready. The person staffing the check-in desk was new and not particularly helpful. This person was clearly following the "rules".  I was told I couldn't check in until 3pm, a three hour wait. I was told I could leave my luggage and go wandering - something I was not inclinded to do, in part because I was in jeans and needed to change into shorts.

 No doubt my life has been a life of change.  As a young child, I lived in at least four different houses before I was 5, not including the time I spent staying with my maternal grandparents.  Then, following my parent's divorce, I lived with my paternal grandparents for a year until my mother rented a house and my brothers and I moved back in with her. A couple of years later she had married again and had another child, my third brother. When I was nine we moved to Idaho for a year, Wisconsin for four years, Texas for a year, and then Illinois where I lived for 40 years, though in different places. I lived in Hanover Park, Carbondale, and Rogers Park for high school, college, and my first job out of college. I was living in Belmont Harbor when I lived when Dan and we got married. We bought a house on the NW side of the city and then a second house in Elmwood Park. We sold that house and moved to Evanston when I started seminary. We lived in Evanston for four years then moved to Pr

  Here I am, back in Illinois near where I lived when I first started blogging in 2006. Hello dear blog. I think I've missed you. I'm not sure I'm ready to move to substack and leave you, though I haven't written a blog post  for 2 years.  The last time I was posting here I was in Scotland and Paris. Now the Olympics are in Paris, like some kind of full circle that was never really a circle. But here I am, back in Illinois, back to this blog, and back to scenes from Paris.  It's lovely here in Oak Park...  Not too hot. Not to humid. Just lovely. I flew in yesterday from AZ. Despite the challenges of travel over the last week, I had no issues. I am here as part of the CFC faculty leading and organizing the Center for Family Consultation's Summer Conference. My part has been tech support and social media PR. The conferennce was today and all went well.  Tomorrow I'm taking Amtrak to Michigan where I will spend a few days with friends. I am looking forward to s

  Blessing the Community Garden, Christians and Muslims, English and Arabic with a local elementary school Arabic drummer ensemble   “The Intercultural Development Inventory® (IDI®) is the premier cross-culturally valid assessment for building cultural competence in your school or organization”  Mitchell R. Hammer, Ph.D.   “I believe and teach that the family therapist usually has the same problems in his (or her) own family that are in the family that he (or she) sees professionally, and that he has a responsibility to define himself in his own family if he is to function adequately in his professional work.” (quote by Murray Bowen in  Bowen Systems Secrets  by Michael Kerr, MD)   In 2018 and I embarked on a journey of study on intercultural competency, anticipating that Bowen Theory would play a role in this study. The hope was that I, as the Rector, would be able to lead my English-speaking Episcopal congregation, comprised primarily of white people of European descent, into forming

I've been to many states in this big beautiful country that I live in. From east to west and north to south, I've lived in or visited many of them in my lifetime. This is, however, the first time I've been in Alabama. I flew here from Michigan on Wednesday, with four other people from my congregation. We're here for a residency as the Baptized for Life initiative at Virginia Theological Seminary draws to a close. Wednesday was a long long day of travel, beginning at 7:30am with a carpool pick up of the team members.  Our flight had a layover in Atlanta before arriving in Birmingham. And as a result we spent  more time waiting in airports than in the air. We encountered an intense storm on our hour long flight from Atlanta to Birmingham, and the flight attendants were directed to stay seated and buckled in. Long stretches of that flight that were very bumpy, the plane shifting violently from side to side. Thank goodness it was only an hour and by the time we were ready t

  We’ve had very little rain where I live. The grass is crunchy and dry. Leaves are drying on the trees and falling off in the wind. But last night a rain storm was blowing in. After a quick supper I headed out for a second round of my daily walks. I hoped to complete a one mile walk around the neighborhood before the rain started. I donned my trusty lightweight waterproof rain jacket and headed out. The air was thick, humid, but cooling down from another hot day. Cool enough that the jacket was just right.     I bought this waterproof rain jacket in 2020 for a sabbatical trip I was planning that included an eight-day retreat near Belfast, Ireland. I anticipated chilly damp weather and a lot of walking, as described in the travel guide for the retreat. The COVID pandemic conditions caused that retreat to be cancelled - twice in 2020 and once in 2021. Finally, it was to take place in August 2022. In July I flew to Scotland, ahead of the retreat in Ireland, where I spent five days walkin