Journal

There is a Balm in Gilead

In anticipation of the Corhaven Graveyard’s Dedication on April 30th, and in commemoration of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968, I wanted to share this beautiful traditional African American spiritual with our audiences.  Listen, for...

God Sightings at Corhaven

 It wasn’t too long after Bill and Tara Haley moved to Corhaven in the Shenandoah Valley and began hosting spiritual retreats that they realized that when you create the space for God to show up, he shows up!  It makes sense.  When one of his beloved sons or daughters...

Easter Monday Devotion

EASTER MONDAY, 2016 by John S. Gardner The first Lent and first Easter since my parents’ deaths has been a time for reflection, a time of necessary busyness, welcome return to work, and sometimes enforced rest (“I am become like one who has no strength,” Ps. 88:4), a...

A Song for Good Friday

Many of us know this traditional African-American spiritual, passed down for many generations since the 19th century. First printed in 1899, it was the first spiritual to be published in a major American hymnal (1940 in the Episcopal Church hymnal). We invite you to...
Loving the Body God Gave You

Loving the Body God Gave You

Join us on April 16th for a retreat led by Margot Eyring, Spiritual Director with Coracle, and Faith Evans, a pastor in Harrisonburg, VA.  See the details about the retreat and more information about the leaders in the flyer below and click anywhere on it for a link...

Palm Sunday Poem

We’re borrowing from G.K. Chesterton and posting a poem told from the perspective of the animal on which Jesus entered Jerusalem.  Welcome to Holy Week everyone! The Donkey BY G. K. CHESTERTON When fishes flew and forests walked    And figs grew upon thorn, Some...

Rest from Restlessness

I’ve been feeling restless recently. I chalked it up to the fact that it was my last semester of grad school and that I was juggling a demanding part-time job with school work and decisions about the future. That it was just this season and my circumstances –...

Deepening Prayer Retreat – April 2

The word “contemplative” can seem incongruous in our lightning-fast world, sounding painstakingly slow, or even archaic. For many, life is about results, and the results that count are tangible, quantifiable ones. Prayer doesn’t always produce those,...

When Nouwen Hooked Me

I was in my very early 20s when using A Guide to Prayer for Ministers and Other Servants that I stumbled across this prayer from a man unknown to me then–Henri Nouwen.  What he wrote pierced my heart, and set me off to find more of what he had written, and there was...

A Letter from God

Our friend Jay Jakub found this awhile back and was kind enough to pass it on. How encouraging! How true! My Child, You may not know me, but I know everything about you. Psalm 139:1 I know when you sit down and when you rise up. Psalm 139:2 I am familiar with all your...

A Prayer to Open Lent

This is one of my all-time favorite poems and prayers, from a man well-acquainted with God, and with sin.  Regarding sin, who cannot agree with his refrain, “I have more”. Yet it ends in hope and freedom from fear, which is precisely the destination of journey of Lent...