Andy & Christine Peters write:   Back in 2006 we adopted a tiny kitten. Weighing only 2 pounds he had a personality much larger than his body. He jumped and scampered around a small shop that had adoptable cats and kittens from the local humane society. He captured my heart and that afternoon he joined our family. He is now 15 years old and although he is showing his age, he has never lost his joyful exuberance and his zest for life. Everything he does is done with his full body, heart and soul. Whether it is playing with a toy, chasing dust cloths around as we clean the house, eating his food with more gusto than neatness, or taking a long snooze on our radiators on a cold winter day, he does everything with a purpose and sense of gratitude. We have learned that sometimes it is best to mimic nature. We have learned from him to live life joyfully and with purpose. We have learned to commit ourselves to a purpose or an end goal without worrying about how it may look to others. W...

  Tim Woodcock writes: On Sunday, Lori and Doug Dowd led a Christian Forum session on mindfulness and art. Lori began with a mindful meditation focused on the breath and awareness. Doug then offered a short talk on drawing as a way to understand the world, proposing that the practice of mindfulness is analogous to the relaxed-yet-attentive state of mind one experiences when making art based on observation. He then challenged us to take part in a low-stakes art exercise: Find an ordinary object – a plant, a household item – and to observe its structure carefully before beginning to draw. He also encouraged us to enjoy the sounds and tactile feeling of a no. 2 pencil moving across a sheet of paper.  Here are some of the results:

  Photo by Mike Willock

And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind.”  (Genesis 9:12-15) Photo taken from our front yard yesterday afternoon after a day of heavy rain (Tim Woodcock)