Earth is so thick with divine possibility that it is a wonder we can walk anywhere without cracking our shins on altars. Mostly he just pays attention to the things he sees: trees, fields, warblers, light. As he does, they become doors to other things: grief, love, amazement, blessing. This kind of blessing prayer is [...]
Sometimes I stagger under the weight of my own feelings. This season has turned so swiftly from one of relative calm to one of choppy seas and brand new changes, and I am still struggling to find my balance. On a daily basis, both my anxiety and my good fortune overwhelm me. How to take [...]
It is with my iphone, most of all, that I capture those tiny moments and details through which I glimpse the eternal. Here are some, from the 7th birthday edition. The view from the sink at our dear friends’ house in New Hampshire where we spent Martin Luther King weekend. I remember the weekend when [...]
Yesterday I wrote about the ways in which the universe, in all of its grandiose, extravagant meaning, is often best glimpsed in the tiniest details. And then, in one of those coincidences-that-aren’t, I read Amy Palko’s fabulous post about “all those tiny details that create an individual.” I love the way we can glimpse, in [...]
“The more you respect and focus on the singular and the strange, the more you become aware of the universal and infinite.” – Gail Godwin I have known and loved this quote for a long time but I have never read anything by Godwin. That’s about to change as Evensong is next in my stack. [...]
Dear Whit, Today you are seven. I have loved every age you’ve ever been – that’s really the truth; for example, I will never be able to adequately express to you the way that your infancy healed so many broken things inside of me. But right now, you are particularly divine. You are growing fast [...]
Seven years ago tomorrow. Cliche alert, but: how? Cue sobs, weeping, overwhelming love, and intense nostalgia. January 20, 2005 3:15 am Samuel Whitman 7 lbs 9 oz 6 days early (and not a dwarf) “And we are put on earth … That we may learn to bear the beams of love.” – William Blake Email [...]
Hart The light of the heart is blue. It is a blue chamber, it never ends, a summer night stretched into dawn through which a deer bounds. ghostly, calm, turning to regard you as you stand on the road. And then departs, having been held only lightly by the eye. Everything natural to us must [...]
I am reading Barbara Brown Taylor’s beautiful An Altar in the World right now and loving it. Several different and disparate people recommended it to me and they were all right. There are many passages that resonate – most of all the section called “reverence,” which is the best way I know how to describe [...]
There is no question that I am the unadventurous sibling. I’ve mentioned my sister? The one who is living in Jerusalem for the year, with her two daughters, ages 5 and 3? Yes, that one. Apparently many boarding school teachers spend their sabbaticals reading books in a hammock at their lake house. Not so my [...]
