Saturday when I arrived at work I met one of my colleagues who was wearing a t-shirt that said, “Stories Matter.” Naturally, I wanted to know the story behind the shirt. He told me it was for something called the 12×12 Initiative that is a twelve week road trip across country, starting yesterday from Raleigh…
Ordinary. Look it up and you will see the dictionary doesn’t deal with the word too kindly: of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional; plain or undistinguished; somewhat inferior or below average; mediocre; customary; usual; normal. And yet, I’m happy to report today was an ordinary day—and it was good. According to the same…
One of the people who has mentored me through her writing over many, many years is Madeleine L’Engle, going all the way back to Ms. Reedy at the Lusaka International School reading A Wrinkle in Time to us at the end of the day if we finished our work. One of the sentences that has…
“As we dedicate ourselves to one another, and thus experience daily and directly the diverse array of gifts that contribute to our living, gratitude will take its rightful place as the fundamental disposition that guides and forms our ways.” — P. Travis Kroeker “Communities of care are sustained by rituals of regard.” — bell hooks…
My friend Claudia is an artist and graphic designer here in town. We get together about once a month for lunch. Besides just hanging out and catching up, she brings some sort of drawing and I bring a poem and we swap them with each other. The idea is then she goes home and paints…
I had a day of rest today, thus, today’s word. respite it’s the streetside café that pulls you out of the crush of people filling the sidewalk; it’s the bench in the park where you can sit unnoticed with the disquieting revelation that the world can go on without you, yet expects you will be…
It’s not hard to find pain around us. I can name several friends who have marked the anniversary of a parent’s death, some who are facing difficult decisions about their jobs, others dealing with illnesses and uncertain outcomes. That just skims the surface. Pain is common currency, along with disappointment and loss. One of life’s…
the words are falling out in twos and threes tonight . . . a trickle of thought and thankfulness trying to keep a promise: I said I would meet you here, and bring a word: mosaic: diverse pieces forming a more or less coherent whole. Start with the shiny shards of my day: the old…
Before I left for work today I perused the shelves in my office to find a book to accompany me at lunch. I picked up The Poet’s Notebook: Excerpts from the Notebooks of Contemporary American Poets, which I have had for a long time. I looked to see when I bought it and the inscription…
Of all the gifts Ginger has given me over our quarter century of living gifts to one another, one that sits high on the list was a iconography classes. Thanks to her ingenuity and thoughtfulness, I got to go once a week to Andover Newton Theological School and work with Christopher Gosey, who was artist…