Posts by Colette Lafia
Sharing our Human Experience
Wednesday Wisdom: Sharing Our Human Experience. I have been sharing the news of my mother’s recent death with many people–extended family, friends, colleagues, people at church, as well as my yoga teacher, my spiritual director, and women in the locker room at the pool that I’ve known for years. There is such a community feeling…
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Wednesday Wisdom: Be Comforted
Blessed are those who mourn: for they will be comforted Sunday evening my mother died. She was elderly, and in many ways this was expected at some point soon, but the series of events in the last month were dramatic, and her death felt sudden. I pulled out some vignettes from my book Comfort & Joy:…
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Living Mercy
Wednesday Wisdom: Living Mercy. In Hebrew, the word for mercy is hesed, which has many more nuances than it does in English. It can be translated as tender love, loving kindness, steadfast love, and loving compassion. Lately, I’ve been feeling so much grief over my elderly mother now being in a wheelchair, and moving into assisted living after falling in her…
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The Tender Love of Mercy
Wednesday Wisdom: The Tender Love of Mercy. Can we have mercy for ourselves? I am just not myself these days. I am disoriented, as I try and accept the change that has taken place with my elderly mother, and as a result with my relationship with her. She fell a few weeks ago, had emergency surgery…
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Surrender to Love
Wednesday Wisdom. Surrender to Love. Today, I am leading a contemplative day of prayer at the lovely and restful Santa Sabina center in Northern California. My theme is embracing surrender in our hearts and in our lives. I will utilize my book, Seeking Surrender, has the focal point of this retreat. As I was reading through my…
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Finding the Courage in Encouragement
O Lord, Come to my Assistance. O Lord, Make Haste to Help Me. Seven times a day the Trappist monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani, and many other monasteries around the world, come together in prayer, and except for the early morning prayer, all the other prayer periods start with this humble call. O Lord, Come…
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