Leah Perrault
Changing the world with egg-cellent words
I suppose it is not a surprise to say that a writer loves words. Thinks words are powerful and important. Spends minutes and hours thinking up just the right way to express feelings and ideas with words.
Tender moments of tending our gardens
The etymology of tending is from the Latin “tendere” to stretch, in a certain direction. What a fabulous way to think about the way we care!
Seeing ourselves in ever-changing stories
This spring, I got an itch for change, and I cut my hair. Sixteen inches of curls lay on the floor. I instantly felt so much lighter. And as I went about my life, it was a big enough change that I didn’t recognize my own reflection. I walked by the microwave in the kitchen or a window on the street and did a double take to see myself clearly. And then I realized that this was also happening inside myself.
A crushing weight and never-ending love
I was trying to decide if I wanted ice cream when I got a text from my sister: “Call mom or I when you can.” It was one of those moments where time stops and the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach knows that my world will never be the same. Someone I love lost their life to suicide. I had the honour of presiding at the Celebration of Life. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. And we need to talk more about this crushing weight – and a never-ending love.
Falling apart as an act of faith
Nothing grows in a death grip, so dare to let yourself go
Several times in the last year, after speaking on grief and loss, I have been asked a question with variations on the same theme: What do we do when it feels like we cannot go on?
Leaving time for the miraculous to emerge
More than a week has passed since Easter and there is still chocolate sitting in the Easter baskets. We are gradually learning that joy can be spread over many days in small doses, rather than trying to consume it all at once. Though the Easter baskets appear on Sunday morning, the resurrection in my life rarely arrives overnight. New life is emerging more than arriving suddenly.
Let me taste goodness so I will not want more
Years ago, musician Audrey Assad released “I Shall Not Want” on an album called Fortunate Fall. She had discovered a Litany of Humility and set it to music. At a concert she did at my parish, she told us that she wrote it so that she would be inspired to pray it more often.
That has worked for me, and the chorus has become a measure of my spiritual health: “When I taste your goodness, I shall not want.”
True(r) stories lead us to divine truth
People are curious and beautiful and mysterious. One of the things I love most about humans is our capacity to make meaning. It is endlessly fascinating to me that many people can be in the same room, experiencing the same objective reality and come away with such beautifully different perspectives and subjective understandings of what has happened. We are all living in the stories of our lives, whether we acknowledge them or not.
Attending to the seeds of intention
Snow has finally starting falling in Saskatchewan, as January brings in a new year and its usual push for resolutions. At the same time, my social media feed is also full of gentle reminders that it is okay to just have made it through. I have been thinking about how these two extremes can be healthily connected at the heart of things. Just as snow falls gently over the ground, and fog wraps its way over the earth, it is a gently held intention that allows us to move peacefully through the season we are in.
Having the hope to approach our longing
I have been sitting in my living room in the dark evenings lit up by the Christmas tree. I am fumbling with a fiddle, coaxing my fingers to play the notes of folk tunes and Christmas carols. This fall, the world seems particularly weary, beauty weighted with a complicated mix of war and worries. And I sing quietly along in my head one of my favourite lines: “A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices.”