Spirit

I'd never seen a gun.

That is, until I saw him.

A couple months ago, I rolled down I-65 towards Franklin, returning phone calls, singing painfully off key to ’80s music — which is apparently considered oldies now — and guzzling my hot coffee while staring beyond the road ahead of me.

“Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.” —Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way

“It’s the thought that counts,” our mothers tell us when we are young. Maybe a grandmother has given us an atlas of the United States, or Uncle Edmund has shortchanged us by coughing up one dollar instead of five, when what we wanted was a Mrs. Beasley doll and a pair of ballet slippers.

On May 31st of this year I walked into a grocery store to pick up a prescription and ended up with a baby.

Yes, really, I did.

I recently babysat my 4-year-old niece and discovered that her technological capabilities already surpass mine.

This month I turn 50. As in, half a century. As in, at least half of my life is gone. It sounds depressing, and in some ways I guess it is. But for the most part, it feels like a gift.

While I am in half moon pose, my yoga instructor says, “Notice how even the slightest movement, even breath, affects the balance.”

Laura Hileman is a dreamer, and she wants you to be one, too. Hileman, who has been leading dream groups for more than 10 years, believes that “dreams become a portal to prayer and to deeper relationship with the Holy.”

I am a wanderer. Not the kind who has walls full of artifacts from foreign countries or hours of enchanting stories about trips to exotic locales. Instead, I possess an impressive and varied collection of church bulletins.