Ordinary Liturgy is born out of the prayers recorded in my journals—prayers of seeking and communing, dreaming and ideating, asking and receiving, hurting and healing, thoughts and musings. In other words: Ordinary Liturgy draws on the content of my life.
 
So, I invite you on a journey through my spiritual awakening. 

I was born into a Christian home and have been on a spiritual path for as long as I can remember. As a young adult, my path led me to study Literature in college and abroad in Germany, and teach English in Tanzania.

In Africa, my heart opened with the warmth of red clay in the earth, singing in times of joy and lament, and always dancing. I taught small business owners, seamstresses, pastors, and Masaai warriors. My students taught me about my own strength, “Teacher, you are a warrior.” And I learned how much I didn’t yet know, but was eager to experience more.
 
When I returned to the states I began my Master's of Divinity. What I intended to be an academic pursuit became a time of deep healing, as the stories and words I was studying were en-fleshed for me. I lived in a community of friends, who became love’s hands and feet. We prayed together, discussed, laughed, and cried—always ending up around the dinner table in the evening, sharing a meal.

Midway through my degree, I traveled and studied throughout Israel. I found myself enfolded into a cohort of fellow pilgrims, all seeking the holy. My understanding of Divinity moved from my head into my body as I swam in bodies of water, climbed mountains, walked across aired land, and tasted unfamiliar foods. And I listened.

I heard God speak in a way I had never experienced before: lovingly, kindly, with tender devotion. I listened as I sat silently in holy cites, and watched scenery scale past me out the bus windows. I started longing for moments to be alone to drink from love’s bottomless fountain. My inner ear had been attuned, my thirst both quenched and leaving me thirsty for more.

When I returned, I began attending an Episcopal Church and was confirmed shortly after. I can now understand why Flannery O’Connor incorporated a daily Eucharist into her writing rhythms—the flesh of God, the bread of heaven. The Eucharist gave me a tactile encounter of the Divine, a sacred meal to allow Christ, the Word, to form in me and inform my writing.

My career as a writer began in Philadelphia, but the west coast never stopped calling to me. Eventually I heeded the call, and moved home to five generations of my bloodline and roots that push far into soft, sea infused earth. My spirituality took on deeper dimensions as I regularly practiced yoga, received and trained in Reiki, and spent time in nature.

Today, I see the entirety of my life’s journey as a process in growing in union with Divinity. God uses any and all the myriad content of my life to reveal love to me—whether living in a village in Africa or writing from my home in San Diego.

As a writer, I am a participant in helping us see this love, uncovering our shared and sacred wholeness. As the Prophet Isaiah calls it: a repairer of the breach. Ordinary Liturgy is one way I can use words to re-pair—help bring back together what we have perceived to be separate.

I am so glad that our paths have brought us together.