Spirituality
Perspective
It’s easy to slip into obsessive thinking. It’s easy to lose our perspective and think our problems, our opinions, our troubles, are more important than they are. On my bad days, this is my view of the world (Thanks to Rev. Allan King for sharing the image with me.) I know that sometimes, when someone…
Read MoreVery Superstitious
The Fearless One! I don’t think of myself as an overly superstitious person. I walk under ladders, although I do check first to see if there’s a can of yellow paint hovering over me. I don’t mind black cats walking in front of my path, although I admit I do get the feeling sometimes that…
Read MoreOrdinary Time
I’ve been thinking about the quality of time, and what the constantly shifting seasonal cycles mean in my life. I heard the term “Ordinary Time” mentioned by the Rector at my church recently, and it reminded me how much I’ve always liked that phrase. Ordinary time — plain time, time without end, simple time. I…
Read MoreNature's prayer
Just before Thanksgiving last year, NPR interviewed Terry Tempest Williams, author of Finding Beauty in a Broken World. In part of the interview, Ms. Williams talked about prairie dogs. She said: “I watched prairie dogs every day, rise before the sun, stand with their paws pressed together facing the rising sun in total stillness for…
Read MoreSpring cleaning for the soul
I’m never quite ready for Lent. It seems to creep up on cat’s paws too quickly and before I’ve fully recuperated from Christmas, there I am at the altar, having someone smear my forehead with ashes and being reminded of my own mortality. “Remember, woman, that thou art dust and until dust shalt thou return.”…
Read MoreEven a heretic…
Last night I found myself in a committee meeting. I don’t really know why I was there, and possibly the other committee members were wondering the same thing. I’m not good in committees. I keep having opinions. Sitting on an organizing committee is sort of like working in an office, something else I’m not very…
Read MoreCreating the future self
Some years ago I saw a movie in which an older man advised a teenager to be careful about what he was doing, because he was in the process of creating, by his thoughts and actions, the man he would become — his future self. It stuck with me. Things do that. They plink down…
Read MoreGalaxies, holographs, physicists and theologians
A number of years ago, my Best Beloved and I were invited to Magdelan College, Oxford, to have dinner at the high table. It was quite an honor, bestowed upon us through no merit of our own, but because my Best Beloved’s cousin was a don there. We met in one of the many ivy-covered…
Read MoreConsider the orchid & the flying pig
For the past ten years or so, I have been tortured by orchids. By this I mean, periodically, in a fit of optimism, I will buy an orchid, drawn to not only the impossible beauty of the flower but also to a certain quality of stillness that orchids have. Nothing terribly exotic, just Phalaenopsis, which…
Read MoreInto the dark midwinter (with glimmers)
And the best of all ways To lengthen our days Is to steal a few hours from the night, my dear. — Thomas Moore Unlike a writer I know, Louise, who lives inconveniently in Alaska, where she suffers terribly from depression during the dark winters months, I adore the short days and long nights of…
Read More