OVER MY LIFETIME I’ve had many opportunities to learn about grief. I’ve lost a lot of close family members: one brother, four grandparents, one son, two uncles, two parents and a mother-in-law, one husband. When a family member dies, there are all those departure-from-life tasks to be attended to, most immediately the care and disposal of…
Read MoreOn her way out my front door my friend turned back and said, “Take care.” I use that phrase all the time. Sometimes it is a caution, meaning be careful, drive safely, don’t do anything foolish. Sometimes it is a wish, may things go well for you. Sometimes it means be good to yourself. Often…
Read MoreI have been sorting through memorabilia. Again. Still. Five generations worth of photos, newspaper clippings, report cards, dance cards, grade school art, certificates, ticket stubs, merit badge cards . . . you know – memorabilia. This week I found a large black-and-white photo of my brother, Jay, tall and handsome. He looks to be about…
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It seems that my May blog post on “stillness, silence, and solitude” struck a vibrant chord with readers. I’ve heard from several folks yearning to “go on retreat,” but then wondering how one prepares to “do” a retreat? One SOS email came from a woman wanting to bail out of a retreat that ended up…
Read Morey favorite chair is one next to the large window overlooking a dozen flower pots and three bird feeders. At least twenty different species visit those feeders, and I love getting to know them and learning their behaviors. I want to know the names of all my avian visitors. (I think it’s…
Read MoreIn emails from friends, in blog posts, in discussions over tea, more and more often lately I’m noticing certain words: Stillness Silence Solitude In poetry and books of prose, in conversations at the grocery store, in magazines, there they are again: Stillness Silence Solitude Is it just that I happen to notice…
Read MoreFour years ago when I first began this blog column, it was with reluctance, and solely for the purpose of promoting my not-yet published book, Meeting in the Margins: An Invitation to Encounter Society’s Invisible People. It was one of those things, like ”having a Facebook presence” and hiring a publicist, that folks in…
Read MoreIn last month’s post I described sitting in a sixth-floor hotel room watching the construction of a building in downtown Seattle. Three weeks later, I study that same building, but from a different angle. This time I observe from a bed on the fifteenth floor of Seattle’s Virginia Mason Hospital. My different perspective started…
Read MoreIn a cozy room on the sixth floor of a Capital Hill hotel in Seattle, I’m seated at the window watching snow and traffic and bundled pedestrians. Tomorrow morning I’ll be speaking at the Search For Meaning conference at Seattle University. But now I’m focused on what’s outside my window. I’m letting my mind play…
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