Saturday, January 21, 2017 It felt good to be out on our little town’s main street with a sign in my hand again, surrounded by my friends and students and – despite the chilly fog – determination and hope. As I describe in my forthcoming book, The Hands-On Life: How to Wake Yourself Up and […]
Read moreLife in the word.
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 The same was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life; and the life was the light of men. …. […]
Read moreMoving the house.
On the morning of November 9, 2016, I walked out of my front door into a world I wasn’t sure I’d recognize. It was the warmest November ever, but with just enough nip to the air to remind us it was still November after all. The sky was creamy blue, the air exhilarating, with a […]
Read moreJohn Milton, the morning after.
Wednesday, November 9, 2016: 7:30 a.m. I have a lot of thoughts but for now, as a college professor, will confine myself to this: What happens now to education, in a country where everyone claims to value it but our new president-elect, and those who voted for him, have just rejected its actual results? I’m […]
Read moreDogs in the road: encountering fear.
Last Sunday I was finishing up a 2-day, 40-mile bike ride to celebrate my 40th birthday, and it took me past a house where I knew there were dogs. They’d barked at me before but never left the yard; I didn’t even see any there this time. Nevertheless I geared up and pedaled harder, just […]
Read moreNew life, in waiting.
For the last few weeks of what’s been a brutally long winter, this was what I saw when I opened my bottom cabinet: thronging vines springing toward the light they’d been seeking in the dark, on their own, whether I was there to open the door or not. These are last year’s potatoes, harvested but […]
Read moreThe twentysomething brain (and beyond.)
(from my manuscript-in-progress) Significantly, Buddhists call looking at an object or emotion steadily for some time and processing the emotions that arise “sustaining the gaze.” The ability to “sustain the gaze” without distraction from within or without is the ability to rest in the relative stability of a mature understanding of reality, to pay attention […]
Read moreThis is your brain on skis.
I learned to cross-country ski from a student of mine about three years ago, on an excursion with a bunch of other novices and a few ultra-experienced daredevils who could launch themselves off the side of a hill, spin in the air — skis flashing like juggled knives — and land upright. I fell a […]
Read moreThe patient gardener? Labor and humility.
I spent the middle of May — just after classes ended, even before turning in my grades — in a fever of garden work, reclaiming a quackgrass-infested lily bed and moving and spreading a giant pile of mulch and constructing a long-dreamed-of raised bed by hand. All of this I did by myself, in one […]
Read moreAfter the election, the way forward.
Today a friend of mine, an African-American woman and PhD candidate, writes: “I tested a subject today whose very existence is the opposite of mine. He is an older (near octogenarian), White Republican, and I am…not. But during the session, we spoke respectfully of our political differences. Though there were the inevitable moments of awkward […]
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