Dylan. A sweet 15 month old who lives in love at the Udom rescue center in Pokot Sunday 26 January 2020 It’s funny how time moves when traveling. Sometimes, the days hurtle by and other times, it seems as if time is standing still.  Mostly, things are moving at a rapid rate here in Kenya. […]

When I think of the days of the week, or the months of the year, I picture each one in their own particular color. I don’t know how this happened, but it’s been a part of the way I see the world (or at least days and months) for as long as I can remember. […]

It was an unlikely meeting one April morning, 2012. She, not even thirty. Me, nudging into middle age (OK, I was plunging into middle age, not liking it one bit).  Mutual friends kept insisting that we meet because of our travels and work in developing countries. And so one sunny morning we met for tea. […]

Medallions attached to my backpack for traveling to Kenya Besides the gift of all of you, I carry a few icons of hope with me to Kenya to remind me of who I am. Crucifix–the source of all mercy, always Mother Teresa--the model of humility, spiced with courage and perseverance Camino shell–points me to The […]

Walking through endless wheat fields in Spain  2014 “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). Jesus’ words from the Gospel of John served as the epigraph of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s exquisite novel, The Brothers Karamazov, and are inscribed on […]

In the still, inky hours between midnight and dawn, my father lay dying.  Unable to speak or move, struggling for breath, his vital organs shutting down, he lay there succumbing to the ravages of a severe stroke and pneumonia. It is difficult to reconcile this image with the one that is before me now. I […]

Tomorrow a young mother will be buried next to her father near her childhood home in rural Kenya. She leaves behind her three-year old daughter. Janet’s story is a bleak reminder of the need for improved healthcare for those who cannot afford to pay. She had grown used to the shame that surrounded her. Shame […]

I open the light blue binder, faded by time and use, to a page filled with words written in teeny tiny cursive.  My mama’s writing. The first page, undated, contains verses from the Psalms. Words of Poetry. Pleas for mercy. Pleas for comfort. Pleas for strength. And, yes, gratitude and praise. Essential words. Tested by […]

31 August 2014 Before embarking on the Camino de Santiago (a pilgrimage through Spain), I pounded the pavement, dirt roads, hiking trails and any other surface that might provide some sort of physical conditioning.  One of my routes close to home, led me by a construction site. I watched as the ground was leveled, wooden […]

“Each day is a journey and the journey itself home,” the poet Matsuo Basho wrote more than three hundred years ago. In 2006 a journey unfolded itself before me, a journey for which I was not prepared. How does a person prepare to lose everything knowable and enter into–or in my case be violently thrust […]