Create the life you want.

By the time many of you read this, I’m likely to be living with the effects of a good old-fashioned nor’easter blizzard. The good news is that 19 th  and 20 th  century science has brought us a pretty thorough understanding of this kind of weather. But the last several decades of science and, most important, technology has improved our ability to predict storms like this one with impressive accuracy. Lives are saved because we can prepare and that is a very good thing. We typ

I woke up from a dream last week in which I’d been traveling to a familiar destination, happy and eager to get where I was going, as I’d always had good experiences in my previous travels there. When I arrived – and I arrived at the right place – it was not the right place. I was confused and disoriented. I knew where I was but I was not where I knew myself to be. Psychoanalysis aside, I was intrigued by the feeling I experienced: How often we follow a plan or a path with sup

Last Friday, in my weekly practice I call Lectio 360, I read a poem by Alberto Rios, a professor at Arizona State University and Arizona's first poet laureate. He leads off the poem When Giving Is All We Have  with an inspiring prompt: One river gives its journey to the next . I've been thinking about it ever since. What are you giving on your journey? What has been given to you from someone else on their journey, knowingly or unknowingly? What have you done with what you hav

I was writing this post about new discoveries when I decided it was not really going where I wanted to go. I’m intrigued, certainly, whenever I hear some new tidbit that upends what we took as truth prior to the new information. Science is a storehouse for many of these stories, as it has been forever. Inventions help us see things we didn’t see before – thereby confirming that all we see is not all there is. From Galileo’s telescope to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, we’v

It is very hard not to write about the turmoil in Minnesota and Maine as well as other parts of our country right now. Even if you focus your attention elsewhere – sports, the weather, reading a great book, cooking a meal, tinkering with a project – it’s likely you have heard the news. But I write this weekly letter to remind myself, and you, about the practice of living with compassion for ourselves and compassion for others. And, these days, opportunity abounds. Compassion

I like words; always have. True story: I used to read the dictionary. What I remember is looking up a word but then getting intrigued by nearby entries, so if you call that reading, then that’s what I did. I learned that words have roots, and, like a tree grows and branches off in different directions, so do words. Studying Latin in high school further strengthened my understanding of cognates – words that share roots even across languages. Think of English night , Spanish no

From January 2013: Remember the old joke about the aspiring musician who stopped a man on the street in New York City and asked, “Excuse me, sir. Can you tell me how to get to Carnegie Hall”? To which the stranger replied, “Practice, practice, practice.” Wherever you are in your practice, whatever your practice is, if you want to improve, keep at it. It can be hard to resist comparison with others – teachers, friends, celebrities, strangers, neighbors, siblings – but resist y

My hand hurts so I thought I would try to exercise it more – more than typing on my computer, anyway; so, I decided to return to crocheting. It was something I did 50 years ago. I made afghans, sweaters, hats, scarves, decorations for the home and more. It was a pastime in the literal sense – I would pass the time spent in front of football games my husband watched on TV which interested me only mildly. Times changed and my habits along with them. And my interests. And then,

It’s here again. The turn of the year. A time when our attention is drawn to numbers. Twenty twenty-five becomes 2026. The first quarter of the century is over (remember the excitement and fuss over Y2K, the turn of the millennium?). We go from the twelfth month to the first. We count down the seconds in celebration of what was and what will be. This is a season for looking back; we remember people who mattered to us and brought us joy, either personally or professionally. We

With apologies to those of you who are also on my mailing list for my weekly contemplative practice Lectio 360. Last Friday, I read this poem to a small group of fellow practitioners. In respect of the wonder of the year-end holidays -- Hannukah, solstice celebrations, Christmas, and many others -- I offer you this startlingly beautiful poem called Just Now by W.S. Merwin. I hope it touches the beauty, the mystery and the miracle of this transition time of year. May your days