The Reconstruction Choice

The Reconstruction Choice

“The reason the Father loves Me is that I lay down My life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord. I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from My Father” (John...

Orchard Memories

Orchard Memories

Margaret Philbrick spent many summers playing tag in the cherry and apple orchards of northern Wisconsin. Her friend Julie grew up on one of those orchards and her life experiences of harvest and loss inspired this story. ******* Like most things it started with one....

Cracked Viola

Cracked Viola

Entrapped by cold concrete, beauty unnoticed between back-to-school walkers, dog sniffers, after dinner strollers. Protected by a crack, fending off frost, courageous late bloomer. Could we be like you? Shining our summer colors when least expected? Hiding our seeds...

Healing Racial Trauma

Healing Racial Trauma

God’s timing is perfect and that is certainly true for Sheila Wise Rowe’s book on Healing Racial Trauma. In the midst of a pandemic year, which may well be the worst imaginable year to launch a book, God has allowed our present circumstances to usher in a deep need...

Empathy Not Excommunication

Empathy Not Excommunication

“If you’re offended when you look on your Facebook page, and you see someone call Hillary Clinton or Maxine Waters the b-word or the c-word, you should be equally offended when you see someone call Ivanka Trump or Ann Coulter those words” – Dr. Brene Brown speaking at...

Laughing with You!

Laughing with You!

“Someone needs to take out the trash. I can smell it from here.” Our daughter, the prima donna, diva ballerina shouted from the stairs as she rounded the corner to grab her bagel breakfast before heading off to high school. Claiming an extremely sensitive sense of...

Gratitude to the End

Gratitude to the End

“Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus.” The whispered phrase, repeated like a Gregorian chant as John leaned back against the bathroom wall submitting to my husband’s lifting of one foot, then the other. The immediate goal, get him into a clean pair of...

She Lost All Her Memory

She Lost All Her Memory

She lost all her memory in drops of misplaced keys forgotten bills a disconnected phone. Her makeup grew heavy. Pristine eyeliner, now charcoal cakes stacked on summer tan base, claret jacket, mauve sweater out of season. “You’ll need to wrap your neck now that it’s...

Margaret Philbrick
Margaret Ann Philbrick serves the Guild as the curator of the Redbud blog on Patheos at https://www.patheos.com/blogs/redbudwritersguild/ She also co-edited and contributed to the Redbud poetry and essay collection, Everbloom, Stories of Deeply Rooted and Transformed Lives (Paraclete Press, 2017). Her first novel, A Minor - A Novel of Love, Music and Memory (Koehler Books, 2014) garnered critical praise, “An emotional story…clear prose…delicately constructed….nuanced characters….breaks the mold.” Kirkus Reviews. Back to the Manger (Singing River Publications, 2009) created with her mother, an oil painter, is now a family Christmas classic with ten years of consistent sales. She and her transgender sibling Carly are featured in the video curriculum for the book, Messy Grace by Caleb Kaltenbach which teaches people how to love authentically amidst lives in transition. Her poems and articles have been featured in numerous anthologies and publications including C.T., Relevant, Ready magazines, The Redbud Post and Patheos on-line. Margaret and her husband live on Lake Mendota in Madison, WI and serve U.W. students from their lighthouse on Langdon, https://www.instagram.com/lighthouseonlangdon/ . She is the mother of three highly dramatic, artistic children and an obsessive compulsive dog, Snuggles.

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