Another description of an animal in winter from Gayle Boss, this time a porcupine: Inside [a hollow oak tree], out of the wind but eschewing the comfort of a nest, he assumes the pose of his winter rest. Sitting up, he tucks the unfurred patch of his rump beneath him so it won’ … | Continue reading
All day, I didn’t know what I was going to write here. A few hours ago, we settled into the bleachers for Wyatt’s basketball game. A couple rows behind us, the two team managers sat manning the video camera. I always love team managers. Afficionados of the sport but maybe not h … | Continue reading
Favorite Sunday of the year yesterday with all the little shepherds and angels and adorable pageant mistakes. This is the first year I didn’t have a child in it. Sigh. The whole tableau is so human, and reminds me of another Christmas poem of mine from the archives. It’s about a … | Continue reading
Just something from Rumi today, whose poetry has been like food and water to me for several years. This is from Daily Readings , translated by Coleman Barks: A Voice through the Door Sometimes you hear a voice through the door calling you, as fish out of water hear the waves … | Continue reading
Parker Palmer had a beautiful Facebook post this morning, referencing David Wagoner’s poem Lost : I thought of [getting lost in the woods] when I woke up this morning feeling a bit lost in the wilds of my own life—lost because, for the moment, I’m without a strong sense … | Continue reading
When I was 18, Denise Levertov’s book Evening Train was assigned to me in my Modern Poetry class with Dr. Delaney. I remember the splurge of buying all those books at the campus bookstore, and I remember the decision not to sell them back—R.S. Thomas, Seamus Heaney, Dylan Thoma … | Continue reading
Had some driving time today, and heard Rob Bell, emphatic as ever, say, “It’s good to be human!” My faith has had a lot of twists and turns over the years, and my experience of the Divine is always changing. I’d call myself “trans-spiritual” or “inter-spiritual” these days, but … | Continue reading
In this excerpt from her poem “Hurricane,” Mary Oliver describes wrecked trees coming back to life: But listen now to what happened to the actual trees; toward the end of that summer day they pushed new leaves from their stubbed limbs. It was the wrong season, yes, but they cou … | Continue reading
This morning my stylist Anna cut my hair (okay—and colored it—sheesh). I always look forward to being in her studio and talking about life. I mentioned a favorite love song and sent her a link. While my hair was setting, she played it on her phone and we listened together. I … | Continue reading
My pastor Sharon talked about joy this morning, and she showed this clip . Aleksander Gamme is a Norwegian adventurer and explorer, and the first to complete an unsupported trip to the South Pole and back. On the way in, he hid supplies and snacks in snow-covered caches. He pu … | Continue reading
Had a quiet walk through the bare winter woods today, feeling companionable with the trees and sky. I’ve been listening to Rob Bell’s 11-part podcast series on Jesus, and heard him say today, “Efficiency may not be God’s highest goal for your life.” Isn’t that relieving? How bo … | Continue reading
My dad works at the Lighthouse Mission in Bellingham and every time we are together, he has saved up some stories. They are always poignant and full of humanity. He was with two of the guests recently who remarked to one another, “The holidays suck.” My dad (the most practiced ob … | Continue reading
Last time I was in San Francisco, the reader board at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts said, “The real leaders walk among us.” It was a year after the 2016 election, and it was exactly what I needed to hear. This morning it said, simply, “You are Loved.” I walked from there to th … | Continue reading
More from Rick Hanson, who says “our brains are like Velcro for bad experiences but Teflon for good ones…We’re designed to over-learn from bad experiences while under-learning from the good ones.” So part of becoming healthier and happier human beings is learning how to encode go … | Continue reading
I have a ridiculous collection of devotional aids (prayer books and beads, oracle cards, candles and incense, icons), but my sister gave me a book that’s at the top of my list again this Advent. Gayle Boss’ All Creation Waits has 25 meditations on how wild animals adapt to … | Continue reading
Yesterday I read an excellent piece by Christena Celeveland called The Privilege of Hopelessness . She says the phrase “Despair is the luxury of the bourgeoisie” has been overheard in a Palestinian refugee camp. Strangely, the farther we are from systemic injustice (by virtu … | Continue reading
Today was one for the books. Emily and I celebrated Eucharist at St. Gregory of Nyssa then walked the labyrinth at Lands End in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. It was sunny and almost windless. On the trail out to the point, the cypress trees spread their windswept c … | Continue reading
This is bark from a Douglas Fir tree along the Nooksack River where I take my retreats. Every time I go to that sacred spot, I notice more. I walked past this elder on a drizzly morning, my hat pulled down over my ears and the roar of the river behind me. It pulled me in, remind … | Continue reading
I’m at the airport, thinking I had 45 minutes to write this post. I refreshed my flight info to see I now have two hours because of a delay. Clearly, it’s time for me to take some of my own advice—to take a retreat wherever I am. The first day of Advent is technically tomorrow i … | Continue reading
I’m far too late with this little number to affect anyone’s Thanksgiving table, but I think yams belong on the table much more often. In that spirit, I offer the following “recipe,” and a lot of thanks for a multitude of blessings: all my clients who employ people, labor over d … | Continue reading
I’m here again, honoring the commitment I made to myself a year ago that I would take a quarterly solo retreat. This is a practice that was modeled to me growing up. My dad would take a day off work go to a monastery up in British Columbia. I remember him assembling his journal a … | Continue reading
I interrupt my months-long writing hiatus to bring you this heartening post on climate change. Really. Don't leave yet. Did you see the movie First Reformed ? Did it make you sad? Are you reading the news about California wildfires, villages in India that are becoming uninhabi … | Continue reading
We live too close to Roosevelt Elementary to qualify for bus transportation, but too far away to walk. So for seven years, I’ve been there almost every weekday. In a few days, that will change. I’ve been so busy with work and life that this transition snuck up on me. I remember … | Continue reading
Missing Emily this weekend. One of the things I love about us is that, when we are together, we are Professional Noticers. Our antennas are up when it comes to people being especially human. When we were in San Francisco in November, we got on the hotel elevator with a housekeepe … | Continue reading
We are in Palm Springs with in-laws. If I were to keep this entry short today, I'd just say, "Thank you, Universe, for sun, for all of us being alive on the planet at the same time." But you know me. I'm thinking about some other stuff. I'm reading Elizabeth Lesser's book Broken … | Continue reading
Sometimes I'm S.A.D. Seasonal Affective Disorder is a thing. Some of us Washingtonians know it well. September is heaven. Half of October usually, too. We're so busy loving the fall colors that we give the first big storms a pass, and we're looking forward to Thanksgiving and get … | Continue reading
I guess I really did go into hibernation. And, as Emily reminded me during our phone call the other morning, resting means that our energy will come back. And boy, it's back. I find myself inspired all over the place lately. I'm inspired by Elizabeth Lesser's book Marrow . One o … | Continue reading
I've gotten a few nudges from some of you. "Are you going to post every day for Advent again this year?" After much consideration, my answer is "No," though I'll post as the Spirit moves (which may be a lot). The word coming up for me this year is "hibernation.&qu | Continue reading
Friends, as I write this I am perched in my living room letting my sister and Mom do all the work. I sprained my ankle this morning and spent all morning in the emergency room. I'm so relieved it wasn't a fracture (it sure FELT like one!), and I'm laughing that the universe is gi … | Continue reading
At the gas station where you stop, are there video monitors on the pumps that tell you what to buy? And what to watch? Ads on the backs of your receipts, and now even in the middle of NPR programming? Do you get notifications on your phone or watch that make everything feel frant … | Continue reading
Like many of you, I'm sure, I've just had a week. The house is cyclonic, there's no clean underwear in my drawer, and Loretta reminded me last night that I still haven't paid her piano teacher for the month. I facilitated seven back-to-back retreats and trainings since Monday and … | Continue reading
Oh boy. I am overrun with nostalgia lately. There's nothing like your kid starting high school to 1) Make you feel old and 2) Make you teary all the *&#*ing time. I have finally started to call myself a poet, accepting that I love brevity and that, for better or for worse, I' … | Continue reading
Song of a Reformer I can't stop trying to be good. It's my illness, though some days it's in remission. By the river, I take my shoes and socks off, find a flat rock and patch of sun, let the glacial water baptize me. See how the river cuts its own path, how the valley surrender … | Continue reading
Little Poems for Dark Days #16 In the shallows of the bay this morning a white mast clanged in the wind, the hull sinking or sunk, someone's little pleasure boat dipping into barnacled obscurity. That's the way of things, I suppose, to disappear or break or take on water and sin … | Continue reading
Little Poems for Dark Days #15 It's windless. Islands we expect to see everyday are grim outlines. Coming down the hill in the morning feels like filing into a bunker. Birds and dogs are confused in the orange light and I'm praying for deliverance though chances are it's futile … | Continue reading
Morning Wake Up He's a hard sleeper just like his dad. When I say his name, touch his arm, he sleeptalks and says he's getting up. I sit on the bed's edge for another minute, straighten his twisted covers, look at him with the kind of love he'd squirm under if awake, the kind of … | Continue reading
Last Swim The afternoon before the school year starts, we go to the beach, sit on the grass under trees that haven't lost their leaves, sigh with gratitude and with grief that nothing lasts forever. | Continue reading
Little Poems for Dark Days #14 He'll send the children away, the ones brought here by parents dreaming of better lives, the ones going to college and probably bussing your table last Friday night. Like the awkward rich kid on the playground, he's taken to beating up kindergartne … | Continue reading
There's Hurricane Harvey and the West Wing travesty and a non-native salmon spill in Puget Sound. And famine in Africa. But tonight, there's Emily flying to California for the year, and then who knows what after that. She's my person, as anyone who's read this blog even once prob … | Continue reading
Little Poems for Dark Days #13 End of the day, nothing written yet. If I have anything to say, it's thank you. Thank you for my life, thank you for this anger, geyser of revolt rising up in me, that part of me that won't sit down, cloud of witnesses who won't be silenced, worker … | Continue reading
Little Poems for Dark Days #12 We agreed this would be the year I stopped making their lunches. But I can't help myself--all the crackers and apples and cookies standing in, as they do, for Love. | Continue reading
Little Poems for Dark Days #11 I'm tired of the bitter river!/Tired of the bars! (Langston Hughes) Whether it's because we built an ark with blood money or happened to be born on top of a hill, those of us on dry land have always been smug, directing others not to be angry or t … | Continue reading
Little Poems for Dark Days #10 Today my free tote bag came in the mail. The fridge is full of washed fruit and little yogurts. I manage to clear my desk, send a note to my aunt, have an idea for a poem or the urge to learn something-- tennis or Spanish or pickle-making. Sparks i … | Continue reading