BUTTERFLY EFFECTS
Recently, I read a short piece about a woman who performed a wing transplant on a living monarch butterfly in Topeka, Kansas. When this butterfly emerged from her chrysalis, it was plain that one of her wings had not formed…
SOME SLACK
I’ve been noticing (again) how deeply uncomfortable I am with empty space. This week, I’ve been vexed by empty space in my calendar. It’s totally neurotic, but I feel an urgency, a compulsion, to fill it up. I worry that…
STRIKE
Okay, so, I’m not real sporty. But I got thinking about how a strike in bowling means knocking all the pins down, but a strike in baseball means a miss. Weird. Strike has a lot of very different connotations, positive…
IN COMMON
It was really special to have my sister and niece visit me in Albuquerque this past week. My niece, Mary, comes regularly and it’s always great. My sister, Robin, however, doesn’t travel much and has never been here in the…
ALTERNATIVE
A number of weeks ago, I responded to a call from someone who was interested in Bosque Center for Spiritual Living. He and his wife were looking for a place to study the Science of Mind. I called him back,…
COMPROMISING POSITIONS
Recently, I learned the Spanish word for “engaged” — comprometido. One of the things I like about studying another language is that it helps me to see my native tongue in a fresh way. Comprometido struck me in that it…
MOTHER NATURE
This week, I spent a lot of time scouring collections of poetry and pouring through my usual go-to books for Sunday readings. I searched online for hours, googling: “Mother’s Day poems… SHORT Mother’s Day poems… Mother’s Day poems that DON’T…
SAFE PASSAGE
I’ve done lots of forgiveness work over the years, in classes and workshops and therapeutic settings. Guided meditations, visualized conversations for healing, letter-writing exercises. Usually, some rich stuff gets unearthed — my own blind spots, a fresh perspective on an…
JUST IN TIME
Travis coined the term “ANGSTICIPATION” last week. It’s a good new word. I put it on my cork board. And I’ve been thinking about how often it’s an apt description of my state of mind. He was talking about the…
THE NEXT NOTE
“When you hit a wrong note, it’s the next note that makes it good or bad.” Miles Davis I spend a decent amount of time worrying about hitting a wrong note. Afraid that something I say or do will be…