It’s often intimidating to walk into a new space filled with strangers. It’s hard to be the stranger but it’s also sometimes intimidating to be the one charged with welcoming the stranger. How does “coffee hour” or “fellowship” after Liturgy remind us, as William Butler Yeats wrote, “There are no strangers here; Only friends you haven’t yet met.”

While most Mother’s Day celebrations include things like cards, brunch or carnations, there are other, more tangible ways to embrace the more non-commercial aspects of appreciating mothers. What would it look like to connect daily gratitude with the small moments of mothering? How might it transform us?

There is a wind farm on I-65 that evokes a sense of longing– for peace, for stillness, for quiet. What does it mean for us, in a busy and loud world, to stay engaged, to seek out that stillness, to harvest this like the wind turbines harvest air?

As attention spans shrink, what entices us to move more deeply into mystery and stillness? How can the acts of reading and prayer help us acquire the spiritual and intellectual nutrition we crave in a world where fast, cheap, and easy are what’s on the menu? Angela talks with friend and bookseller, Warren Farha of Eighth Day Books about stillness, “real books” and beach reads.

How we care for and nurture our bodies has implications for all areas of our development—physical, emotional, and even spiritual. The body is a living and organic revelation of the unseen spirit inside—a kind of garden. Garden in the East is a poetic exploration of how the care of the body can lead us to wholeness and wellness in every area of our lives. In this podcast, Angela reads an excerpt from the book.