This morning, as I settled into my morning rhythm, I decided to turn on my fireplace.
I’ve lived in this townhome for three winters now. The fireplace is electric, activated by a light switch, and I’ve always loved the warmth and glow it brings. But this morning, from the angle I was sitting, I noticed something I had never seen before within the crevice at the top where the fan blows: a small red button.
I wondered, could this be a way to turn off the blower while keeping the fire’s glow?
Curious, I walked over with a pen, nudged the button to the side, and suddenly the blower shut off. The fire remained, quietly glowing.
I laughed out loud. Three winters. And only now did I discover that I could have the ambiance without the noise.
It felt like a small revelation. One of those moments that seems insignificant, but really isn’t.
That discovery brought my attention to fire itself. The element.
When I think back across the homes of my life, from childhood through adulthood, many of them had fireplaces. I was taught at an early age how to build a proper fire: how to stack the wood, coax the flame, and be patient. I’ve joked before that being a good fire starter is part of my lineage.
After my divorce, when I moved into a small apartment and my life felt turned upside down, there was a wood-burning fireplace. I remember thinking how comforting it was to stack a little pile of wood on the patio. That fireplace made the space feel like home at a time when very little felt settled. It anchored me.
So when I moved here, even though the fireplace was electric, I appreciated its presence. Fire, whether real or simulated, has always brought me calm. A sense of being held.
Reflecting on the service of fire from the beginning of time, it was warmth and protection, a gathering place, a center. It was where stories were told, and meals were prepared, where prayers rose like smoke. Transforming whatever is offered.
I love an outdoor fire on a cool fall night, a fire pit where conversation slows and something ancient stirs. Or where I can sit in solitude, staring into the flames, mesmerized by the dance. Before I left for the Camino, I held a fire ceremony to release anything that no longer belonged on that pilgrimage, anything that weighed on my heart and kept me tethered to old stories. I trusted the fire to take it as a symbolic prayer.
And then this morning, standing there with my pen still in hand, I realized something else.
I didn’t turn the fire off. I simply turned off the noise.
The glow remained. The essence remained, just quieter.
That feels like a mirror for this season of my life.
I am less drawn to the kind of fire that demands constant tending. I’m learning to recognize the quiet fire.
There is time for the blaze. And there is time for the ember.
Both are sacred.
A Blessing & Simple Fire Ritual
If you feel called, here is a small ritual you might try.
Sit near a fire if you can, a fireplace, a fire pit, or even the imagined warmth of one. If not, simply place your hands over your heart.
Take a few slow breaths.
Ask yourself gently:
What in my life needs warmth right now, not noise?
What can I let burn quietly instead of loudly?
If there is something you are ready to release, imagine placing it into the fire.
No explanation. Just trust.
Then offer a blessing:
May what no longer serves me be transformed.
May what remains bring warmth.
May I tend the fire of my life with wisdom and care.
Sit for a moment longer. Let the glow do its work.

​This morning, my prayer was simple:
Lord, thank you for this day of peace and stillness. Let me embrace the slowness of being present in each moment.
As the world rushes around me, I feel the pull to join in the chaos, and at the same time, it feels inauthentic to do anything other than to sit quietly with God.
This time of year is full of invitations: pop-up shops, holiday parties, and photo ops. I see others celebrating the holiday, participating in all the ways we’re told we should. Still, the only pull I feel is toward retreat.
That raises a quiet, honest question in me:
Why don’t I want to join in?
Am I missing something by choosing stillness?
Is retreat a way of avoiding the human experience or a way of honoring it?
This stillness brings an awareness of the season I am in. I’ve just come off an intense year and a very demanding work season. I’m standing at the edge of publishing a book that involves deep emotional and spiritual presence. And perhaps most importantly, I’m learning to listen to my body in a new way, learning what it means to slow down before exhaustion demands it.
The Advent season reminds us that not every sacred moment happens in celebration. Some happen in waiting. Mary carried something sacred that demanded stillness. Before anything is born, there is a long season of becoming.
I hold this tension gently. I don’t want to confuse solitude with isolation. I know how easy it can be to disappear under the guise of rest. So I’m paying attention and not forcing myself outward, nor closing myself off.
Presence doesn’t always look like showing up everywhere.
Sometimes it looks like choosing what is nourishing, honest, and sustainable.
For me, right now, that means fewer obligations and deeper listening. Less doing, more being.
If you find yourself out of step with the season, you’re not alone. Stillness may be your way of participating more fully than you realize.
There is wisdom in honoring the pace your soul asks for.
And there is grace in trusting that this, too, belongs.
Peace be with you.
J~

As this year draws to a close, I notice something different in myself.
In years past, December often carried a strong desire to craft a clear narrative for what would come next. I believe in the power of intention, and I’ve experienced the quiet miracle of manifestation. Words matter. Vision matters. I trust that.
But this year feels quieter.
Instead of a pull to declare what the next year should look like, I feel something softer. Peace and a gentle wondering, What’s next? Asked with reverence and openness.
This past year did not unfold as I imagined, and still, it was extraordinary. I walked the Camino. I wrote a book. Both happened not through force or perfect planning, but through divine invitations to listen and respond, one step and one sentence at a time.
Now, standing at the edge of a new year, I find myself less interested in authoring the future and more interested in true presence.

Letting Life Unfold
There is a season for setting intentions, for naming what we long for, and for writing it into being. There is a time for goals and vision boards.
But there is also another season. One that asks us to loosen our grip on control. To allow.
Right now, writing a narrative feels less sacred. It feels like speaking too loudly over something that is still forming. I don’t feel called to make plans or decide outcomes. I feel called to stay present enough to recognize direction when it appears.
When I look back at how both the Camino and my book came to be, it was trust, not certainty, that brought everything together.

Letting the Book Find Its Way
I’m preparing to release a book into the world, and what surprises me most is the tenderness I feel around it. I’ve spent so much time inside these words that I feel like I'm letting go of part of my heart. 
I don’t know how far this book will travel or who it will reach, and that uncertainty feels okay.
Maybe it doesn’t need to be pushed.
Maybe it needs to be placed gently and allowed to find its way, in its own time, to the people it’s meant for.

Entering a Hermit Season
As I look at the final two weeks on the calendar, I feel more drawn toward solitude than ever, not as withdrawal, but as nourishment.
Fewer conversations. Quiet mornings. Long moments of simply looking out the window.
The hermit archetype isn’t about avoiding life. It’s about tending the inner fire so it doesn’t go out. As a writer, a pilgrim, and a woman in a season of integration, this quieter rhythm feels not only natural, but necessary.

What’s Next?
I don’t have answers about what comes next, where I’ll be, what shape my work will take, or what relationships may unfold. And for the first time, that uncertainty doesn’t feel like failure.
It feels like a sacred pause.
As this year ends, I’m choosing contemplation over conclusion. I’m allowing the next chapter to reveal itself.

I invite you into contemplation.
What if this new year doesn’t need a plan?
What if it only needs your presence?

A Permission Slip for the Final Days of the Year
You are allowed to slow down.
You are allowed to rest without earning it.
You are allowed to let the year close without extracting a lesson from every moment.
You are allowed to enter the new year without a plan, a word, or a list.
You are allowed to listen instead of decide.
You are allowed to trust that clarity will come when it’s time.
Nothing is lost in stillness.
Some things can only be found there.

Peace be with you!
J~
​

This morning, before my feet even hit the floor, a familiar phrase rose in my mind:
“Creator of heaven and earth, of all that is seen and unseen.”
This phrase from the Creed, even though it’s worded differently now, is one I’ve heard my entire life in the Mass tradition. But it has never surfaced quite like this, waking me before I was fully awake. Could something so old be speaking a truth for me today?
After listening to my Advent meditation, I found myself writing down a simple question:
What is my Magnificat?
Where are the places in my life that God has met me in the obvious, unmistakable moments, and in the quiet, hidden ones? In the seen and the unseen?
There were seasons when God’s presence was so clear I could feel it in my bones. One in particular: the morning I found myself on the floor, praying with everything I had for the courage to leave my marriage. That was a moment of the seen, the kind of moment you can never un-remember. The kind that redirects a life.
But there were far more years when the unseen work of God was unfolding behind the curtain of my busy, hypervigilant life. On the surface, everything looked fine. I prayed, I functioned, I smiled. But internally, my life was fragmented and chaotic. I tried to manage everything on my own, believing that if I worked hard enough, I could somehow make my way out of the mess I had created.
I felt ashamed of where I had ended up, even though God already knew every corner of my story. I was the one hiding, not Him.
Looking back now, I can see how present God was in those unseen years. Not in ways I recognized at the time, but in the quiet nudges, the subtle protections, the intuition that whispered, Not this… not anymore. God was never absent. I was just too distracted to notice.
Lately, I’ve been returning to the image of my inner mentor, the woman I’ve written about before. She is the version of myself in her seventies, standing outside her cottage by the lake. I see her clearly: calm, grounded, wise. She looks back at the life I am living now with a kind of gentle assurance, as if to say, You’re learning. Keep going. Trust what you cannot yet see.
She is the embodiment of the unseen wisdom already planted in me.
As I reflect on this Advent season and that phrase from the Creed, I’m reminded that faith is not just believing in what is visible. It is trusting the slow, patient work happening beneath the surface. It is remembering the times when God carried me through the dark, even when I didn’t recognize His presence. The unseen.
Maybe that’s my Magnificat these days:
A quiet song of gratitude for the God who moves in both the seen and unseen places of my life.
And maybe that’s why journaling has been such a lifeline for me all these years. It is where the unseen becomes seen. Where the messy, honest parts of my story finally have a place to land.
God has always been there, in the moments I recognized and in the ones I missed.
Seen and unseen.
Always present.
I invite you to take a quiet moment and reflect on your own life.
Where can you trace God’s presence?
The seen, the clear, defining moments you can name.
The unseen, subtle nudges, the quiet protection, the hidden ways you were carried.
Write about one moment from each.
What do these experiences reveal to you about how God moves in your life today?

Reflection: December 10th, 2025
The wind is so very strong this morning. It woke me at 2 a.m., rattling the house, stirring my mind. Half-awake, I imagined the Christmas décor on my front porch being battered and tossed, and I wondered if it sounded worse than it truly was. Then my mind ruminated on the neighbor who leaves his trash bins out for days, letting them tumble down the street in every storm. I can’t grasp not following the simple rule of putting them away; it just seems illogical.
Eventually, I drifted back to sleep, slipping into slow, deep breathwork, calming my mind one inhale at a time.
Now, as I sit here writing, I watch the mix of wind, clouds, and sun move across the morning. I’m captured by all of it, the way nature never arrives in just one mood, the way she always brings me contemplation.
As the wind sweeps across the world, I can’t help but wonder what its purpose is today.
What is it asking?
What is it clearing?
What is it carrying?
Is it blowing away old residue clinging to the edges of my life?
Is it carrying a message or a song?
Is it ushering something into the world that needs an extra push to arrive?
Oh, the wind.
How will you shape me today?
And most of all…
What are you asking me to untuck?

​Today is the last day of Medicare AEP, and as I sit here this morning, I feel a sense of stillness settling over me. For weeks, I’ve been waiting for this day to come. Counting down. Reaching for the finish line. But now that it’s here, I find myself reflecting on the whole of the experience, feeling the weight of the past 54 days.
Yesterday, I felt a different kind of fatigue. It was as if everything I had carried rose to the surface at once. For 54 days, I had hundreds of conversations. I listened to fears, held space for frustration, and witnessed the quiet ache of people navigating changes they didn’t fully understand. I sat with the burdens of those facing the realities of aging, asking in their own ways, What happens next?
The truth is, I don’t just do this work.
I inhabit it.
I step fully into every story, every question, every fear someone brings to me.
And for that reason, I don’t simply clock out when it’s over.
In my mind’s eye, I see the names of each person on a strip of paper swirling in the wind above me, and I ask:
Did I give my best to each person?
Was I kind, even when the pressure grew heavy?
Did I help them feel at ease?
Now, with the last 24 days of the year in front of me, a new question rises:
What is left for me to let go of?
What lives in the quiet crevices of my heart, the tucked-away places beyond my own reach, that only the Holy Spirit can touch and heal?
This is the sacred transition I feel myself entering:
from carrying others to letting God carry me,
from holding burdens to releasing my own,
from effort to surrender.
Today, I am grateful for all of it, the strain, grace, and humanity of these past 54 days. And I am listening now for what is ready to fall away so that I can step into the new year with a lighter heart, an untucked spirit, and a soul made more whole.

Reflection: December 6, 2025
Holy Spirit, come into my heart
as I sit with You in stillness.

This morning, as I moved through Advent meditation, I heard an affirmation that tugged at my heart: to have a recollecting soul.
Something in those words feels like home.

Recollection is remembering, with reverence and humility, the ways God has shown me mercy. The ways the Holy Spirit has tugged me back when I had fallen asleep to my own truth.
I recollect seasons when I was happy on the surface, yet still shielded from the deeper truth of my soul. Half-awake I like to call it. Making the best of things. Ignoring the nudge, the discomfort, the signs.

But the Holy Spirit is persistent.
And when I finally surrender it always brings me to a place of clarity.
At times it felt like an out-of-body experience: the Holy Spirit stepping forward when I felt too small, too tired, or too afraid.
 
Surrender has always revealed something deeper:
a wound I tried to outrun,
a lie I unknowingly believed,
a trouble I didn’t want to name.
And yet, every time I stopped resisting and let myself fall into God’s mercy, freedom rose.

I want to live a life of recollection,
because only in recollection can I hear God’s voice
soft, subtle to the restless soul.
St. Faustina wrote that only the recollected soul can hear Him.
And I feel that deeply today.

Let’s be honest: we are a distracted people. Scattered, pulled in a hundred directions. The world around us trains us toward restlessness, jumping from emotion to emotion, opinion to opinion. But genuine prayer and true inner clarity only come through detachment and recollection.
Constant attachment breeds a restless spirit.
Recollection, however, guides us back home.
 
Advent is the perfect season for this:
to return,
to remember,
to recollect ourselves in God.
​
Peace
J~