Sharing so much about your inner life when you’re not one of those “Here I am!” people is strange. But sometimes a song will well up to the point that you have to give voice to it or burst. I’ve never been silent, but it took about 50 years for the larger story to take fuller shape. Not that the story isn’t still being written, but late one night it became clear that it was time to let it out.

My book, Garden Songs: A Spiritual Formation Field Journal, is the child I’ve never had—after a life-long labor, something birthed in me that surprised no one more than myself. I’m so grateful to God for his help in finding the words to tell the story that he’s written in me. The words to express his love and faithfulness that have healed, grown, and freed me.

“Why, then, do I set before You an ordered account of so many things? It’s certainly not through me that You know them. But I’m stirring up love for You in myself and in those who read this so that we may all say, great is the Lord and highly worthy to be praised. I tell my story for love of Your love.”

St. Augustine

Like all of us have, there are vantage points and factors that flesh out my context and inform my experience. But right here, right now, as we first meet each other, there are greater things that unite us. Can we start here instead?

If Garden Songs: A Spiritual Formation Field Journal has impacted you in some way, it would mean the world to hear from you.

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