Refuge for the Broken-Hearted: Solace of Literature
Many brilliant thinkers have written many sparkling sentences about the solace of literature during personal and shared dark times — “The Consolations of Writing: Literary Strategies of Resistance from Boethius to Primo Levi” by Rivkah Zim and “Literature and Consolation: Fictions of Comfort” by Jürgen Pieters spring to mind. But I’m not an academic. I’m…
Read MoreA Refuge For The Broken-Hearted — Laughing at Nazis
Today is Ostara, the Spring Equinox, a time of balance and rebirth. So Blessed, Merry Ostara to all. Particularly the ‘merry’ bit. More on that below. (hint: it’s a superpower) Ostara’s roots are old, and although some claim it’s a relatively new ‘Wiccan’ holiday, it transcends all such (slightly condescending) naming. I mean, come on……
Read MoreA Refuge For The Broken-Hearted – soup and community
White Soup Bowl by Anne Coster Vallayer 1771 I made soup last Friday morning, and as happens so often when I cook, it was an unreasonable amount of soup. Enough to feed at least six when we are only two: My Best Beloved me, and sweet small dog. So, three really, but Maggie the…
Read MoreRefuge for the Broken-Hearted – a beginning
View into the Prime Hook Wildlife Refuge in Delaware Perhaps you are like me. I’m a Virgo with a list for almost everything, and my spice drawer is organized alphabetically. I mean, how do you find the cumin if it’s not next to the coriander? I do very poorly in chaos and uncertainty.…
Read MoreA Poem for Returning Home
THE FIRST PILGRIMAGE Lauren B. Davis The fruit was not as sweet as I’d hoped. You might call it tart. But I loved the tree. I loved the way the branches twisted and reached out for light and life, every limb an offering. Who was I to say no? Everyone blames the snake,…
Read More2024: Liberation and Death
Every year, as some of you know, I choose a word to focus on, as a way of experiencing whatever may happen during this turn of the wheel, and I calculate the Tarot card that symbolizes this part of my spiritual journey. A couple of days ago I wrote about my Tarot card of 2023…
Read More2023 – The Hanged Man & Interbeing
Last year my chosen word was “Interbeing,” a term coined by Thich Nhat Hanh that speaks to how all of us, every sentient being in the cosmos, are connected and are in relationship with one another. Then there’s the Tarot card. I like the Tarot. I use it often, as did Carl Jung and many…
Read MoreBooks of my year
What a strange year it’s been. So much loss, frankly. My beloved Bailey, and my anam-cara, Sr. Rita, and our dear friend, Paul, and Sr. Mary Ann, and even our great 100+-year-old tree, called by a friend, “The Sentinal of the Neighborhood,” and the world, which is full of losses and violence and fear, and…
Read MoreWisdom Companion — the last, for Sr. Rita has gone Home.
Sr. Rita Woehlcke, my soul friend, my aman-cara, has gone home on this day, September 23, 2023, the day of the Autumnal Equinox, which the Irish call Mabon, when the wheel turns into the long, quiet, dark half of the year, a time to ponder death and grief, and to bring in the harvest, a…
Read MoreWriting Matters, Regardless. Meditation, Writing, and the Mundus Imaginalis.
A friend I talked to recently hit on the existential pain of the writer’s life when they said they feared their long years of work and sacrifice were all for nothing since they feared (with good reason) the book they’d been working on for years will never be published. To have a manuscript remain unpublished…
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