Create the life you want.

I was doing the crossword puzzle today and was down to a handful of clues that I just could not figure out. So, I took my own advice, took a breath, and shut the computer off. I walked away. My advice to myself was just that – walk away. I’ve learned that sometimes the best solution to a problem is to stop trying to solve it. Now I realize this tactic is not appropriate in all situations. But in this case, it was. And it is in many cases. There are so many times when we just

I beg you...to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far into the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.

Readers and friends of this letter know I like gardening. For one thing, it’s a great metaphor for living, as I recently wrote. I don’t pretend to be a great gardener, but I have learned a few things. One is that weeding, for me, is a great stress releaser. Five years ago – to the weekend – I was hard at work cutting, weeding and pulling up every superfluous thing in my back yard garden. It was because my husband was gravely ill in a hospital bed and I was having to contempla

Yesterday at 4:24 p.m. was the moment in between. That hour marked the summer solstice in Connecticut where I live. It is the pause between inhaling and exhaling. Or exhaling and inhaling. It’s the playground swing at the peak of its arc before it begins its descent. It’s water turning to ice or to steam. It’s a cusp, a threshold, the beginning of a return. No wonder ancients created all kinds of rituals around the solstices. It feels special. Of course, it's simple astronomy

Consider the humble thread. It seems like barely a thing at all. It might come from a plant growing right up out of the dirt or from a grass waving in tidal waters. It might even be liquid protein secreted from the head of a worm. But weave enough thread together and you have fabric. Cut and – with more thread – stitch your fabric together and you have clothing that can protect you from all kinds of weather. All from a lowly thread. Or consider the nail, a small metal spike

My teacher Josh Liebling begins each session in our weekly Qi Gong class with a quote or two so all of us in the room can bring our attention to a thought or feeling or emotion to carry through our practice. Last week it was about hope, and I loved this quote: "The road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead to the same destination.” * It made me think of our ever-present power of choice. It also bring

It is Sunday evening and I am sitting on my deck, happy that I have a deck. I am freshly showered after four hours of yard work, gardening, and planting annuals in my flower boxes and containers. And I am tired. I love this time of the year. I love this time of day this time of year. I love this time of day this time of year this day of the week. I am happy listening to the sparrows and pleased that I know the difference between a song sparrow, a chipping sparrow and a white-

One hundred and fifty-eight years ago, the Grand Army of the Republic, a fraternal organization of Union Civil War veterans, established Decoration Day as a time to decorate the graves of those who died in that war with flowers. They picked May 30 because flowers would be in bloom in most of the United States at that time, an easy, ready and suitable tribute to lay upon a grave. Estimates are that as many as 850,000 people died in our own nation's Civil War. !!!!! Eventually

Eleven years ago, I posted this poem by Jack Prelutsky as a reminder that some things in life are right, just the way they are. Also known as "If it ain't broke, don't fix it!" Be glad your nose is on your face, not pasted on some other place, for if it were where it is not, you might dislike your nose a lot. Imagine if your precious nose were sandwiched in between your toes, that clearly would not be a treat, for you'd be forced to smell your feet. Your nose would be a sourc

There’s a reason that gardening is a metaphor for living. Actually, there are dozens. Today, I finally attended to the rock garden. It was vastly overgrown with weeds. Over the years, my neighbor’s lily of the valley has intruded into this garden, the weeds that never seem to die but that need pulling every year have wended their way everywhere and the plants I want have just extended their own tendrils as far as they can. It was chaos. As I worked, every metaphor for living