"Silent night, Holy night. All is calm, all is bright..." The carols try to tell us that this is a calm and silent time of year. But for most of us, the weeks leading up to Christmas can be anything but calm. You know the drill: office parties, shopping, baking, wrapping, relatives, Christmas plays and everyone's favorite - family pictures. It's...

This past week I have been, quite literally, voiceless. A bad case of tonsillitis left me with little more than a whisper.  It’s been a very quiet week.  Today I still don’t have my voice back but I’m feeling just a bit better and I started to notice the changes in my behavior.  I realized  I’ve been stepping back. I did not attempt...

Story told by Jeff Yellow Owl, written by Patty Duncan In 1923 the government took my grandmother from her parents and put her in a boarding school to immerse her in the white man’s culture. She remembers bumping along in a wagon, watching her home and family disappear in the rolling hills of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation in...

One of humanity's quirks is that people actually like to be scared. At least, pretend scared. Kids (and often adults) dress up as ghouls, ghosts, pirates, and their favorite costumed superheros and villains and run around from house to house shouting "Trick of Treat!" and demanding candy. I've always thought Halloween is one of the weirdest holidays:...

When you think of Easter do you think of bunnies and eggs? Chicks and baskets? Possibly a cross or a church or spring dresses?  I think of hundred year old houses.  It’s a little random, I know, but at the heart of it, Easter is all about restoration. You don’t have to look far to see what’s wrong with the world.  The places where we’re...