St Thomas

Do you ever suffer from sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia? If you do, you have no one to blame but yourself. That may sound harsh, but I know first hand about this because I, through my own doing, suffered from it again last week. That’s right, just a few days ago I made the mistake of eating my two scoop mint chocolate chip ice cream cone way too fast. Sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia is the scientific name for what we normally refer to as a brain freeze or a dreaded ice cream headache. A brain freeze, I learned after doing a little research, is caused when the nerve fibers on the roof of one’s mouth get overwhelmed with too much of a cold sensation. When this happens the nerve fibers begin to constrict and the brain interprets the signals it is getting as pain. A brain freeze will pass relatively quickly (although it doesn’t feel…

I have always loved going to farmers markets, but the last two years, my weekly visits to buy freshly harvested vegetables have taken on a whole additional level of significance for me. That’s because the market vendor I am buying my freshly harvested, chemical-free vegetables from is Blue Heron Community Farm, a Wisconsin farm started two and half years ago by my hard working daughter and son-in-law. I have learned more about how to grow and choose healthy food in the last few years than I ever knew was possible. To walk the fields with the farmers who are growing your food and to see first hand how food can be grown without herbicides and pesticides (but with a lot of hard, manual labor) has helped me to connect with the source of my food in a way that no trip to a grocery store ever will. I recently read…

Some of the most beautiful words ever written about love were authored two thousand years ago by the apostle Paul. The words appear in the Bible’s New Testament. If you have attended a Christian wedding this summer, you may have even heard his words read at the ceremony. No matter how many times any of us have heard or read these words, they are always a good reminder of how we are to live in relationship with others. I, for one, am always moved by them. Here are Paul’s words from his first letter to the Corinthians written almost two thousand years ago. Love is patient; love is kind. Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; It does not rejoice in wrong doing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes…

A core principle of centering practices, including mindfulness, meditation, and centering prayer, is focusing on the present moment. Concentrating on one’s breath, or a centering word is often helpful to keep one’s mind from wandering. I have had a mindfulness/centering prayer practice for many years, but in all honesty, it’s a challenge. Sometimes I am very disciplined in practicing daily, and sometimes not. And I always struggle with my attention getting hijacked by a myriad of thoughts and concerns. This summer, I have had the good fortune of spending some extended time with two of the most exceptional mindfulness teachers I have ever known. To be in their presence is to experience what it is like to be singularly focused on the present moment, free from all worries about the past or future. These two teachers are my five and three-year-old grandsons, and when I am with them, I am…

Our office mail always comes with a rubber band wrapped around it. About a year ago, I started saving the rubber bands and making them into a ball. Each day I add a new band to the ball, which doesn’t seem like much, but my ball has gradually grown to the size of a baseball. Given its composition, it is naturally bouncy, and I’m finding it makes for a fun diversion when I take a break. I once used a rubber band ball as an illustration for a children’s sermon on the importance of having a group of supportive people in our lives. I held up a few individual rubber bands and asked the kids what would happen if I tried to bounce them on the floor. They looked at me rather strangely when I threw a few individual bands down to the floor, and nothing happened. Then I took…