The Big Lesson
There is no teaching until the pupil is brought into the same state of principle in which you are; a transfusion takes place; he is you and you are he; then is a teaching, and by no friendly chance or…
Thinking about Love
If you do not know or understand someone, can you truly love them? The desire to love needs to include the desire to understand. To know, one must believe that knowing is possible. Communion, which encompasses authentic sharing, cannot be…
Open to Life
As I’ve written previously, I was raised Catholic and tried most of my life to get the right answers so I could be an outstanding one, but that wasn’t the end goal. The end goal was to get to heaven,…
Touching the Tangential
My husband is a good man with a great mind that he is constantly exercising. His daily workouts include writing, something each and every one of us should be doing. Did you know that writing things with a pen or…
Presently Absent
Sharing or not sharing: that is the question. I go through cycles; one day, I’m determined to just use my voice, no matter what. The next, I feel defiant and determined to never bother again. A day or two later,…
Do You Speak a Dead Language?
“The source of life which you create lies in the power of the language which you have.” —Christopher Alexander, The Timeless Way of Building How many of us think about and analyze the language we have—the one we were given…
I Will Just Keep Reading, Thinking, and Writing
And you? I seldom hold a book in my hands and think, “Somebody wrote this crap?” or “Why on earth did anyone see fit to publish this?” There have been a few—what comes immediately to mind are one on self-publishing…
Before the Lips Go Still
I don’t know how or when it happened, but at some point in life, I began to let myself have my own opinions. I reached a point at which I became okay with not liking something I was told I…
A Leisurely Life
It was made abundantly clear to me yesterday, by more than one person, that they have little to no interest in my words. If they fit into accepted boundaries, they’re harmless and can be engaged with (but then, what is…
When Clarity is Needed
In The Power and the Glory, considered by many to be Graham Greene’s masterpiece, the whisky priest is on the run in Tabasco, a state in Mexico where Catholicism was outlawed in the 1930s. Priests are being rounded up and…
The Silent Treatment
I wake up in the morning and, after figuring out what day it is, think, “Hey, I get to write today. I wonder what I’ll say.” It’s a nice thought. For more than a year, I was in the habit…
Being Honest with a Friend Should Not Require Courage
When my fourth child was almost a year old, I had an important conversation with a friend, but I had no idea, at the time, how important it would be. Perhaps I should look her up and reach out again,…
