September has been challenging, frayed around the edges, its undeniable moments of glowing joy and surpassing peace studded in a background of more chaos and disorientation than usual. I started a new job. Grace and Whit started in new grades. Our brand-new nanny quit after two weeks. My writing has stalled out, and I’m more [...]
How’s this for imperfection … I could not figure out how to take a picture of myself and not have the writing be a mirror image of itself. So I wrote it backwards. Dumb or resourceful? You decide. Either way, not at all perfect. My post earlier today, about contradictions and complexity, could be read [...]
On Monday afternoon I interviewed about 8 people for positions in finance. In between interviews, I hurriedly opened Katrina Kenison‘s Mitten Strings for God and devoured a few pages. This summer I drove down to New York for an event that Aidan hosted with Dani Shapiro. As I drove, I listened to Mary Oliver reading [...]
This winter a blog reader sent me a link to a YouTube video that I clicked on (uncharacteristically, since honestly I don’t much like watching video). Before a minute had elapsed tears were streaming down my face. Before the video was over I’d ordered the book that Katrina Kenison read from in it, The Gift [...]
I was surprised and pleased by the response I got to Friday’s post, which honestly felt to me like a bit of a cop-out when I wrote it. “Wrote” being a euphemism, of course, because I did more photo uploading than anything. No big aha or any insight at all, even. Just a couple of [...]
It hasn’t been my favorite week or two of my life. The words are running dry and I’m just bone tired. So, I can offer some snapshots from the past couple of weeks, which also reminds me that there were some moments of joy in there. Whit had minor surgery two weeks ago. Everything went [...]
in and out, up and down, over and over. she wove her strands of life together, patching hole after hole. eventually she saw it was more than the threads that gave her strength, it was in the very act of weaving itself that she became strong. -Terri St Cloud I read this last night on [...]
This summer I read Gail Caldwell’s memoir about her friendship with Caroline Knapp, Let’s Take the Long Way Home. I loved it – I found myself weeping and smiling, thinking of those few people I love best, and sharing it with my mother who knows what it’s like to lose someone so dear they take [...]
I can only add my voice to the chorus – the more eloquent and beautifully-expressed chorus – celebrating Karen Maezen Miller and her Mother’s Plunge in Boston on Saturday. It was a lovely day, one that I know will continue to seep into my spirit over time. I won’t forget Karen’s animated face, her contagious [...]
My heart is full today. A beloved friend is nearing the end of a long, exceedingly courageous journey with cancer. Moment by moment, she is being called upon to let go of this physical world and to open to mysteries beyond our human understanding. Watching the sunrise at 6:30 this morning, walking in the woods, [...]
