Devotions

Recently I started a course called Wellbeing with Horses at Drum RDA in Edinburgh. I'm already a big part of the way through. The end result should be a healthier lifestyle and also just sheer joy at getting to work with animals. So far so good. Here are some snapshots of that journey so far:  Starting out: Learning to lead the horse and mindful grooming: Practiced getting a pretend horse 🐎 ready then doing it for real and leading them out the barn for a trot. Setting up a handy pony course and leading the horse around....

There's an old idea, one that St. Francis of Assisi made famous in his Canticle of the Sun, that the sun and moon aren't just distant objects lighting our days and nights — they're kin. Brother Sun. Sister Moon. Family, in a sense, part of the same created order we belong to. It's a small shift in language, but it changes something. When the sun is just "the sun," it's background noise — something we barely register on our way to the car. When it's Brother Sun, it becomes a presence. Something worth noticing. Something worth thanking God for. Ask the Animals Job 12:7 puts it simply: ask the animals, and they will teach you. It's a strange invitation on the surface — what could a bird or a beast possibly have to teach a person? But Scripture keeps returning to this idea that creation itself is a kind of instructor, quietly demonstrating things about dependence, trust, and design that we're often too busy to notice on our own. That raises a few h...