Writer’s Mental Health
Writing 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 To have a manuscript remain unpublished…
Read MoreNo Magic Solution To Criticism: In Conversation with Sr. Rita Woehlcke
As you know, my dear friend Sr. Rita is undergoing chemo for cancer, a disease she calls her “Wisdom Companion.” She has written, and continues to write, about the wisdom she is receiving as she is on this journey. You can read her essays on this blog. Just look in the search engine. The other…
Read MoreThe Marvel of the World
I’m sitting at my desk in front of the window at the cabin, looking out on the laneway and the creek. I am trying to write. I am trying to be present to the All-That-Is. I’m not doing very well. Monkey-mind and an inner voice that tells me it’s all shite after all. A thunder…
Read MoreThe Wheel Turns To Remind Us
A blessed Lughnasadh/Lammas to all. After a brutal spate of heat (that many are still suffering), I woke to a cool wet morning. The creek has been alarmingly low these past weeks. The deer tiptoe across and barely get their hooves wet. It rained for a couple of hours last night, but hardly enough to…
Read MoreNuclear calm?
I am old enough, God help me, to remember “duck and cover.” Back at the dawn of time, in the height of the Cold War, even in a small town outside of Montreal, Quebec, we school children of the era understood that “duck and cover” meant a nuclear bomb was headed our way and that…
Read MoreTo Go Gently, Or Not? Thoughts on Impermanence
I have a dear friend, Mark, who may be one of the most compassionate, kind, and intelligent people I know. He is also very tall and absurdly handsome. (How he will guffaw if he reads that last bit!) He tells many interesting stories, and this is one of them: Once, back when he was a…
Read MoreMary Oliver, Brother Phap Dung, and Small White Dogs (My Dog Is Dying, Part III)
A NOTE TO READERS….. The title of this blog says almost everything. I will add a few things, though. This time is EXCRUCIATING. So much so that I will not be answering phone calls for the foreseeable future. Answering emails will be touch and go… and forgive me if you comment on this series of…
Read MoreMy Dog Is Dying (Part II)
A NOTE TO READERS….. The title of this blog says almost everything. I will add a few things, though. This time is EXCRUCIATING. So much so that I will not be answering phone calls for the foreseeable future. Answering emails will be touch and go… and forgive me if you comment on this series of…
Read MoreEven So …. #21
Day ? of the pandemic. A robin builds a next to the bedroom window; a wren builds a nest by my office door, a chickadee builds a nest by the windchimes hanging from the arbor, in spite of everything. A big old watersnake guards its territory by the creek bank and startles me so that…
Read MoreEven So…. #19
It’s been a few days since I last posted, because things got busy, even so. A very old friend, Michael Cheeks, passed away from cancer. I’ve known Michael since I was eighteen. Born in Guyana, Michael ended up, with his beautiful wife, Linda, in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories. Michael was a big man, well…
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