STAY, in the Breath

letters from a writer & photographer's journey

Raynna

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The Deepening Gaze of Faithfulness

In the early morning, of this fairyland I live in, the air is brimming with sound. The roosters remind me I live in rural America but the other bird songs are still so newborn to me that it persists to feel as my first morning here, like the stuff of dreams. In a reverie it feels like I’m enclosed by tropical forest and its reverberations. The bright blue wing of.. Read More

An Open Love Letter (II)

(read part 1 here)  Because I love you, I want to tell you about my hope. It’s the mystical work of God that one can love another who sometimes they never see or are never physically present with, but it is nonetheless true. My readers, my traveling companions, I love you. As I write to you I am surrounded by, in stereo, the river’s ever forward charge, the raven’s chatter.. Read More

An Open Love Letter

Hello my fellow travelers, how are you? I mean that question truly and welcome you to write to me if you’d like. I have often shared with you things that I have been privileged to learn from my teacher, Keren Hannah Pryor, she is a messianic Jew who is a teacher and author who writes and shares beauty and truth from Jerusalem. She is a gift who offers rich treasures.. Read More

Grow Gently: A Companion

I believe in hidden beauty, and in taking the time to perceive it. I believe if we look, we will find…even as the highway passes by in a blur. We all find ourselves there sometimes—life passing by, “too quickly” or “too slowly”. It’s painful. But, it’s not unredeemable. What a wealth of story lays in the creation surrounding us everyday of our lives, story of a breaking so that something.. Read More

I Will Sing

The first fresh days of the new year are unfolding into deeper ones and I want to be here within them, but I feel enclosed in almost a continual house of mourning so far this year. I feel grateful to be alive in this glowing and abundant world, everyday I really do feel that thrill, but it also has been tempered by loss. It has made it difficult to write, yet.. Read More

Cautionary Tales

Many a morning comes with cautionary tales, some of which are true. But true doesn’t always mean stop. We need the wisdom of perspective to let truth and mercy lead, especially when life comes to us as narratives that give pause. In the Psalms, Selah is a musical term often spoken of as a pause, it was meant for meditation. It is a call to depth over width. Maybe that.. Read More

A Winter Walk in the Wilds

Wanna go for a walk together? Let’s follow the river a ways, the snow has just begun to fall in our little slice of wilderness, and I must venture out into it. “It is still the morning of creation, the morning stars are singing together…”, said John Muir, and I feel its truth in my bones even as the night comes and I breathe deep in wonder climbing down the.. Read More

Faithful Fight

Rumi once wrote, “The way the night knows itself with the moon, be that with me.” Or, alternately translated, “Union is a raging river running toward the sea. Tonight the moon kisses the stars. O beloved, be like that to me.” I am afraid of many things. I fear not knowing union like Rumi wrote, or of not protecting it, or fighting for it with my life. The last seven.. Read More

Faithful Light

It’s a beautiful world of continual connections that we get to live and love and learn within. Some days that connectivity feels far away from our surfaces, out of reach, submerged even. To keep lights on for one another, speak truths to one another, remind each other of the obvious and not so obvious (to us…right now…) is so important. “What is obvious to you, is amazing to others.” -Derek.. Read More

The Faithfulness Writings Begin…

Tears are a language I know well, pain a companion I strive to learn from but often fight. Know that I write to you from a fully human place, it is why I write. “Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.” – I Corinthians 13:12(b) ESVi So, today, I write with dreams and hopes that as I do, maybe together.. Read More