What’s growing now (a pause)
What’s growing in your garden? Not just in your outside garden, which I hope is flourishing, but in your inner garden as well—the land of hopes, dreams, possibilities, compromises, and creations. This year in the northwest, winter felt long, and then spring, when it came, seemed rather ambivalent—tantalizing us with a few warm and sunny days […]
Letting life “cure” us
Every day, life burnishes and “cures” us —sometimes by the unexpected and dramatic, sometimes by the routine and ordinary. We feel, we love, we celebrate, we grieve, and we grow. I walk to the paddock each morning and see cycles of life—beginning, maturing, and fading—playing out before me. The impending death of a 29-year-old horse […]
There Goes the Sun (da, da, da, da, da)
In a world that’s full of darkness, it’s nice, even miraculous, when something pulls us into the light together. Usually, it takes something dreadful to rally us as a country—stuff like war, a common enemy, a bellicose leader, or a terrible tragedy. Last week the sun and moon pulled off the ultimate convening event—a dazzling […]
When crazy is sane (or a dog’s life)
Have you ever noticed that sometimes the craziest things we do turn out to be the most sane? Acquiring an animal can be like that. I don’t think I’ve had a clean-floor day since my springer spaniel twins came bounding into my life four years ago. But for my sister, inviting a dog into her […]
How to be embodied in a world that’s increasingly not—eight simple steps
The signs of disembodiment are everywhere. Our 24-7 culture seems better suited to constantly-turned-on robots than to humans who do better when they live by the rhythms of nature and their bodies. Many of us need to practice what came naturally to us as children: embodiment. It’s the practice of being fully connected to our […]
The fog from war
I’m feeling foggy and overwhelmed again. Dang. After two-plus years of Covid-brain, I thought the fog had lifted. But another fog has descended, reflecting a global tragedy that appears at least as serious. The fog of war. The term “fog of war” came from the Prussian military analyst, Carl von Clausewitz, who wrote: “War is […]
Coming back to our senses (in the year of the tiger)
Humans are born reactors. Living in a world of saber-toothed tigers, we learned to know danger when we sensed the animal was near. Without having to think much, our brain threw us into the modes of fight, flight, and freeze. Our ability to sense danger and immediately react probably saved our species. But today, it […]
Walk slowly (RIP Thich Nhat Hanh)
[et_pb_section admin_label=”section”] [et_pb_row admin_label=”row”] [et_pb_column type=”4_4″][et_pb_text admin_label=”Text”] “Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.” Thich Nhat Hahn His body is gone, the great, gentle, Vietnamese Buddhist priest, Thich Nhat Hanh, who died […]
Can the pandemic crack us open?
By some reports, we may be in for another two years of the pandemic. I recently heard it referred to as an era, not an event. With continuing day-by-day uncertainties, it may be hard to imagine that this, too, will pass. Someday the pandemic will have run its course, and we’ll be able to ask ourselves, “Did […]
Pausing for fall colors
Labels are tricky. When we view the world through our labels, we may never see it as it is. Yet, names and labels can also give us distinctions that expand what we see. That’s how it is for me and the fall colors I adore. I grew up thinking of them as yellow, orange, brown, and […]
