12 Comments

This is a beautiful reflection. Your writings about your faith have helped me deepen and understand my relationship with God. I think I connect to your writing because of the similarity in how I was brought up in religion and how that left an emptiness and a disconnect in a loving relationship with God. Thank you for the honesty you share in your writing because it led me to seek more true understanding of God's love for me. The chorus to Laura Daigle's song "Losing My Religion" summarizes this well:

"...

I'm losing my religion

To find You

I'm losing my religion

In finding something new

'Cause I need something different

And different looks like You

..."

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Thank you Kelly. Lots of sympathetic vibrations for me in this post. For me, as I grow older, there is the paradox of feeling hollow and whole at the same time. At 61 I am still, in small increments, detaching from what I thought made up the sum total of me. My role as a pastor... my education... the warehouse of my experiences... all of that, and more, seems to bounce off of the challenges around me and within me. I don't feel hollow because I am empty. I feel hollow because I reach for that idea... that perspective or truth that was always there, only to find that it is out of stock and no one is placing an order for it anyway. I feel whole, because, in small increments, I am embracing how small I am. It's why I feel so alive at the edge of the ocean. Like I nestled next to a grain of sand... content to be near the vast beauty and majesty of the sea. So happy to just be a grain of sand.

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Apr 8, 2023Liked by Kelly Flanagan

"We grow most beautiful in this second half of life." I very much needed to hear that today. Thank you, Kelly.

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Apr 8, 2023Liked by Kelly Flanagan

This is beautiful. I've always thought of today - the Easter Vigil - as the most liminal of liminal spaces. I also was struck by the fact that you experienced the glow of those leaves three times within a week. I agree with you, as a 52-year-old - that this second half of life is when we grow most beautiful and also, if we're doing it right, when we learn to trust and let go. Thank you - such a poignant reminder. Keep writing!!!

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Nov 8, 2023Liked by Kelly Flanagan

I desire a glowing, a resurrected energy deeper into the flow: ready, waiting, expectant, aglow with all the possibilities of having just let go and now embracing the flow

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