Just Faith, Everyday

Been thinking about the power of dreams lately--the way they seep into our lives, the way we work out our souls through them, grapple with our problems. I’ve been dreaming pretty intently lately, with great detail. An interesting little symptom during pregnancy, this dreaming, I know, this has to do with my little one, growing and moving inside. Dreams carry into our everyday lives, and our waking dreams move us, if we let them, along a path, in some direction. Choice after choice we come to be who we’re meant to be in the scheme of our dreams. What’s mind-blowing is the way in which this process consistently changes and moves us. I think I only recently realized the extent to which other people’s dreams can affect me, move me, help create opportunities for choice. Of course, all of this, to my eyes, has a kind of spiritual bend to it. It’s easy to forget God’s part in the equation, and humbling to remember the ways in which our will to choose the path we’re on is in itself a crea...

I find baking relaxing. There’s something about following a recipe, considering each part and what it contributes, that has a quieting hold on me. Each step, rendered properly, yields a wonderful end result. There are various mitigating factors--I worry about having the right kind of flour or butter, enough flavoring, and the ever-vexing oven temperature issue--but for the most part a recipe’s defined structure helps create that aroma of freshly baked something, made by my own hands, that spells satisfaction of the senses. Following directions for anything can be this satisfying, especially when victory over some sort of conundrum is the result: destination found, item fixed, program recorded, etc. Time with God can lead to an understanding about prayer which, while we like to think so, has no definable ingredients every time, but does yield the same results: an opening of self to God. Well, if we let it happen--but of course, that’s the hard part. My time with God has morphed i...