JoAnn Campbell-Rice

A Holy Emptiness

During this darkest time of the year, I’m sitting with a powerful poem that celebrates emptiness. Oblation     By Elizabeth B. Rooney I hope each day To offer less to You, Each day By Your great love to be Diminished Until at last I am So decreased...

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“ONLY CONNECT”

When I drove an SUV with a spare tire on the back, I had a friend paint on it a globe and the words only connect. Often strangers in a parking lot would approach and ask what it meant. “What do you think it means?” I’d reply.  I watched them...

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Letting Go of “Supposed To”

I just finished Elan Mistai’s novel, All Our Wrong Todays about time travel and parallel consciousness, and one of the lines late in the book cracked me open.  Mistai writes that if there’s a point to the book, it’s this: “there’s no such thing as the life you’re...

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Striving vs. Alignment

by JoAnn Campbell-Rice I’ve been a transformation junkie most of my life. I have attended retreats and workshops, read uplifting books, and attached myself to mentors since I was a teen. I’ve always had a vision of who I wanted to be, articulated in the children’s...

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Invited to Expand

by JoAnn Campbell-Rice I’m reading Mary Pipher’s newest book, Women Rowing North: Navigating Life’s Currents and Flourishing as We Age in which she states a truth that I’ve been thinking about ever since: “With each new stage of life, we outgrow the strategies that...

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What Am I Not Seeing?

By JoAnn Campbell-Rice I recently experienced an object lesson in empathy.  One afternoon a directee squinted into the sun as she sat down, and as I adjusted the blinds, it occurred to me I could rearrange the furniture so that she didn’t have to face the window. I’d...

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Holiday Invitations

by JoAnn Campbell-Rice Recently, several planned events disappeared from my calendar and I found myself with unscheduled time, a luxury in my life. Yet I didn’t run to my desk to write, revise, or draft new ideas, which is what I say I want do with every spare...

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What Can I Bring to Spiritual Direction?

by JoAnn Campbell-Rice At a recent poetry workshop with Naomi Shihab Nye, I became aware of what I love so much about this artist—she finds poetry everywhere, and she shares it enthusiastically with her audience. It’s enlivening being in her presence. So too, as...

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Circles of Wisdom

By JoAnn Campbell-Rice Is there anything more healing than being truly heard? In ordinary conversation when someone speaks, others respond, interrupt, ask questions, share their own experiences, offer advice, or change the subject entirely. That format works on lots...

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Tutored in Wisdom

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text] Tutored in Wisdom By JoAnn Campbell-Rice Yesterday at my desk at home, futzing with my computer, I glanced out the window. On the peak of our shed at the property line was a large brown animal. Was it a cat? It had pointed ears and...

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