Tag: Soul Care

Reality

Illusions fall and shatter
Thorny shards scatter

Look carefully
Step carefully

Soul-silence sweeping
Reality’s unveiling


It is  rambling, infant chatter
undermined self-importance
It is  unending, unseen chores
doorways to humility
It is traveling to teasing chants of “Betrayal!”
bear-hug forgiveness upon return
It is  satisfaction overflowing
ambitions quietly simmering
It is  quietness and trust
strengths drawn from repentance


Crystal slivers bagged and gone
Deeper truth glitters on

Surpassing value of You
Surpassing value of Them

Precious stones strewn
These fundamentally true

©2025 Jacqueline Tisthammer. All rights reserved.

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Normal Has Wings

Last weekend, I drove to work with two jars of muddy water in my car. The illustration was simple: the human soul is like a jar of river water. Shake it up and everything gets murky, let it settle and we can see more clearly. Of everything I said in my seminar that night, participants remember the jars of water best.

I first encountered this illustration in Ruth Haley Barton’s book, Invitation to Solitude and Silence. It was my junior year of college and the reality of future changes loomed. God used that book to name the chaos in my soul and invite me to live differently.

I wish I could say I’ve been faithful to God’s invitation to silence as a regular practice, but that just isn’t true. Much of my life is lived in a chaotic sort of normal, and times of silence are more often a treat than my bread and butter. Most days I cave to the easy but hollow forms of rest offered by my phone apps rather than reaching for practices that truly still the chaos.

Silence is way to chart a new course for my soul, and silence is a place of clarity I need right now as I navigate a world permanently altered by the pandemic. What about you?

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On Being Present with Fear

“Will I be OK?” he asked, sitting on the edge of the pool.

“Of course! Mommy and Gammy are right here!” To myself I thought, “Even on the bottom step the water would only reach your chest. Why is this such a big deal?”

We were swimming for the first time in a long time. He only came to watch his baby brother swim, but something in him still remembered the exhilaration of moving through the water. So, he consented to wear a swim suit, and then decided to put it on in advance. When we arrived, he put his feet straight in, bottom firmly planted on the side of the pool, kicking and splashing.

But now we were asking him to go all the way in.

“Will I be OK?” he asked again. Continue reading “On Being Present with Fear”

On the Brink

Sometimes in the darkest part of the night
I play my old cassettes to fill the overpowering silence
A familiar cadence of thoughts blares out, ready to lend meaning to any moment

Those tapes remind me of who I am, what the world is like,
How hard to slam the door on the way out of giving a damn –
You know, all the important things

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