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Find Fun (A MiniMustard Devotional)
Today’s seed for thought: Find Fun. It was a little wet out tonight. Then I found this overflowing downspout that I couldn’t resist. The sound of the water drumming on my raincoat made me laugh out loud. Better than one of the massaging shower heads, I’d say. My dog decided she wanted in on the…
Multitasking? Multi-distracting!
Today’s thought to ponder: You think you’re multitasking. You’re actually multi-distracting. On a particular Sunday when sickness kept me home, I was sorting files while listening to church online. I was on my third sermon of the day from as many different preachers when the pastor said: “Multitasking is a way of life in the…
Mini-Mustard: Messy Progress
Today’s seed for thought… Progress is messy. Here, sit on the floor with me and ponder this mess I just unearthed from behind closed doors. Ever have one of those this-would-have-been-a-whole-lot-simpler-if-I-just-left-well-enough-alone moments? Yeah, me too. Unfortunately, that’s not how this works. Progress, my friends, is messy. It doesn’t follow a straight line, and it doesn’t…
The Sound of Snow
Reflections on the linguistics of snow and the sound snow makes. Also, God. You may have heard that Eskimo languages have more words for snow than the English language. Because I try not to share an urban legend without some attempt at the zig-zag origins of obscure facts, I went to that ever-faithful resource Google.…
Infinite
At a recent Bible study, the pastor had us meditate on an excerpt of Jeremiah 29:11: For surely I know the plans I have for you… to give you a future with hope (NRSV). We were asked to identify the most important word in the verse. I started with hope, others started with give, one…
Add Some Creative to your Christmas
I once took a baby pig to pet pictures with Santa. (Yes, a real piglet.) And I once landscaped a roommate’s bed with castaways from the university compost pile. The masterpiece was complete with past-bloom mums, dried corn stalks, and a carefully curated stone wall. (Don’t worry, I covered the bed with thick black plastic…
With Thanksgiving
Every once in a while I find myself ruminating on a piece of scripture in a curious sort of way. Not that ruminating on scripture is curious, rather I mean that I get curious about what I’m ruminating on. This happened recently with Philippians 4 and that oft-quoted passage: Do not be anxious about anything,…
The Haircut (a.k.a., Growing Pains)
As she was cutting fist-fulls of hair from my head, my hair stylist told me this story: “When I was younger, I always wanted to have short hair and my mom wouldn’t let me. Then when I was in beauty school, I asked one of the instructors to cut my hair and she wouldn’t either.…
The Spice of Life
A few weeks ago, we welcomed a family onto our side of the church. They weren’t new to our congregation; they had simply stepped across the aisle and sat in a new location. During the guest introductions, we introduced them as having moved from the other side of the aisle to visit our side of…
Canned Brown Bread (Reflections on Taste and See)
You will read this post in a couple weeks when I have returned from vacation. But as I sit down to write, I am still on the anticipatory side of a 10-day camping trip. We’ll tour some new stretches of my beloved New England, get lost in the woods (hopefully just figuratively), and enjoy some…
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Meet Janet!
Janet Beagle, PhD is the founder of The Mustard Patch. She divides her time between the Midwest and New England, and if she’s not writing, she’s probably out hiking with her 2-and 4-footed friends.