When I consider how best and briefly to describe our times, the word that keeps returning to my page is “heavy.” There’s the weighty matter of mortality in the pandemic and its attendant losses. There’s the hefty and horrifying legacy of racial oppression hoisted into the public square by repeated state-sanctioned racialized violence. And there’s […]
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A friend was camping in the wilderness with an avid outdoorsperson, when one night as they sat by their campfire, they heard branches snapping and a large animal approaching from the wooded darkness behind them. As my friend prepared to flee, his companion rose and also ran – but straight into the woods, not away, […]
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Story tells us, the Buddha was once asked how he crossed the great flood of suffering. The exchange went like this: “How, dear sir, did you cross the flood?” “By not halting, friend, and by not straining I crossed the flood.” “But how is it, dear sir, that by not halting and by not straining […]
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The morning after the United States Capitol in DC was breached by pro-Trumpian rioters, I woke up as if shaken by a bad dream. To be clear, this is a repeated nightmare that has been going on in this country for centuries and one that has been increasingly widespread in its visibility and violence in […]
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Conjunction On the longest night of a long, long-shadowed year, a new star shining briefly on the horizon, aligns the slowest planets in the sky. Jupiter and Saturn appear as one, in a proximity 456 million miles wide, to the earthbound eye one fifth the width of the moon. * What proximity might my heart’s […]
+ Read MoreNever before, in my experience, has Thanksgiving looked like this — the turkey waiting to be roasted while the guest list dwindles to our immediate household, all of us advised not to gather. Instead, we are asked to shelter in place on a day usually marked by hauling out extra leaves for the table, extra […]
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It first appeared in our yard the Monday of election week. With so much on the line, I guess I was looking for a sign – and afraid of getting one I didn’t want. So the arrival of a white rock dove – as emblematic of peace as anything I could have conjured – was […]
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