ON A SOURCE WITH NO NAME
When it feels like something’s wrong in our lives or in the world, it’s really easy to get fixated on the “fix.” If something appears to be missing or broken — and, honestly, there’s always something, yes? — it usually…
WHY HALLOW THERE
I don’t use the word “hallow” much. Almost never. I might change that. There’s the familiar idea of hallowed ground, of course, but I don’t believe that I’ve ever described anyplace as such. And I know “hallowéd be Thy name”…
NEVER GONNA GIVE YOU UP
Maybe I should save this talk for Halloween because I am thinking about one of the scariest things in the world. It makes my palms clammy and my pulse race up into my throat. I’m thinking about REJECTION. Yikes! I…
HUNGRY LIKE THE WOLF
My friend Denise shared with me this charming legend about St. Francis of Assisi: The town of Gubbio had a serious problem. An enormous lone wolf was eating the villagers’ sheep. Several people tried to stop it — the shepherd,…
SWEET SURRENDER
Autumn is, without a doubt, my favorite time of year. John Keats called it the “season of mists and mellow fruitfulness.” Mmm, yes. Our New Mexico skies somehow become even more astonishingly blue. The bosque turns to gold. It takes…
JUMP FOR JOY
Our brains are wired to perceive connections and draw significance from a gazillion pieces of sensory input every day. Simply to be able to function through this maelstrom of information, we can’t help but do a whole lot of projecting,…
FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE
Why can’t you trust atoms? Because they make up everything. It’s a silly joke, maybe even stupid. Still, I must admit that it resonates lately — the part about not trusting, about not being about to trust in that which…
MY CIRCUS, MY MONKEYS
A few years ago, a Polish proverb hit social media. This saying was everywhere all of a sudden: “Not my circus, not my monkeys.” I’ve seen it on T-shirts and greeting cards, on coffee mugs and baby onesies. It’s catchy…
FAIRY TALE LIFE
“Chaos is a friend of mine.” - Bob Dylan I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s podcast a few weeks ago, a series of episodes in which he deconstructs Disney’s adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid.” Gladwell and some…
THE GOOD OLD DAYS
The yellow brick road starts our as a spiral in the movie, The Wizard of Oz. It’s like an echo of the tornado that dropped Dorothy in this strange, magical, technicolor world. She is still a little disoriented as she…