As most of you know by now, our family was evacuated on Wednesday, at 4:30 AM due to the Eaton fire in Altadena, the community next door to ours.  We have been staying in Orange County ever since, first with our son and his family and then in a hotel.  With school cancelled through...

Turning the page on a new year, I’ve reflected on how I began my journey of Quotidian Thoughts over eleven years ago.  What is a Quotidian Thought anyway?  

Quotidian Thoughts are those moments of everydayness, that take on some meaning or significance because of their very...

“In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone.”    Christina Rossetti

Some people really dislike this classic Christmas hymn.  I don’t know if they find it too grim and cheerless, or if they take issue because...

One day during Advent, I found myself sitting in my bathrobe, in my living room where I could see the front of the house, afraid to leave in case porch pirates were tempted by the stack of Christmas boxes on my  porch.  Mostly full of worthless trinkets of gifts that I send to my...

On an early morning during Thanksgiving week, we wove into our London vacation a photo shoot for all of our Christmas cards.  It was one of those perfect days: no fog, no rain, slightly nippy but not frigid.  We managed to get everyone dressed and made up, and we congenially wended our...

Regent Street in London is like Fifth Avenue in New York or Michigan Ave. in Chicago.  During the whole week of Black Friday, it is full of teeming hordes of shoppers, shoulder to shoulder, shopping bag to shopping bag.  And all of the human crush takes place under spectacularly lighted...

From the window of our room in our London Hotel, we could see All Souls Church, the congregation where theologian John Stott grew up and ministered for his entire life.  Stott’s father was an agnostic, but his mother was raised Lutheran and chose to take her son to this Anglican...

“They’re changing the guard at Buckingham Palace
Christopher Robin went down with Alice
A face looked out, but it wasn’t the King’s
‘He’s much too busy asigning things,’
                       ...

It’s the fear of flying that holds us down,
  tightly gripping to each other, the
who we were but are not anymore.

But oh, how much more terrifying
  to let go, to risk free-falling into
the mawing abyss of what-ifs!

We make tentative moves, small forays
  into unfamiliar...

“Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established.”    Romans 13:1 

We had a spirited debate in our Bible study before the US election.  The passage that begins with these words from...