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Waking Up in the Darkness and Despair?

Waking Up in the Darkness and Despair?

Recently, on the fourth day of not feeling well – I don’t really know how to describe what I was feeling, because it didn’t seem to fit a simple label, just involved some achiness, no appetite, low energy, a weak feeling (a weak feeling? What kind of illness is...

Opening to the Mystery

Opening to the Mystery

The Wisdom of the Mystics Richard Rohr shares how studying the mystics can transform us and help us meet the needs of our times:   We live in a time of both crisis and opportunity. While there are many reasons to be anxious, I still have hope. Westerners, including...

Curious about Personality Styles?

Curious about Personality Styles?

Sometimes (often?) we find ourselves struggling to understand other people: he is a mystery to me, she behaves in ways I don’t understand, this person makes me uncomfortable, why does he/she/they do that?  Many of us have explored theories of personality, especially...

New Beginnings 2024

New Beginnings 2024

I’m sitting here on January 13, 2024, surrounded by a powerful winter storm. The temperature is 12 degrees, which apparently (I’m staying inside!) feels like  -10 degrees. I can hear – and almost feel – the intense power, the howling and yes, roaring, of the winds...

Climate Change and Climate Anxiety

Climate Change and Climate Anxiety

Climate change: Rise in Google searches around ‘anxiety’ 22nd November 2023 By Lucy Gilder BBC Online search queries related to "climate anxiety" have risen, according to data gathered by Google and shared exclusively with BBC 100 Women. Studies also suggests that...

The Lenses We See Through

The Lenses We See Through

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are – Anais Nin   Having just passed through an election, plus anticipating the Presidential Election a year from now – and also facing the current situation in the Middle East - I am once again reminded about...

Love and Despair for the Planet

Love and Despair for the Planet

The Peace of Wild Things When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I...

The Journey towards Healing

The Journey towards Healing

The Healing Time   Finally on my way to yes I bump into all the places where I said no to my life all the untended wounds the red and purple scars those hieroglyphs of pain carved into my skin, my bones, those coded messages that send me down the wrong street...

What We Pay Attention To – and Avoid

What We Pay Attention To – and Avoid

  As I was walking this morning, I began paying attention to where my attention was going…. Mostly, it was wandering. Looking at the trees, at other people on the path, planning the day, remembering what happened yesterday, contemplating the focus of my blog… We...

Alone in the Dark

Alone in the Dark

If you ever found yourself as a child terrified and alone in an unfamiliar dark space… if you were ever lost outdoors on a dark night when the other kids had run off and left you far behind … if your mother died and left you or you were really sick and in quarantine...

Loneliness and Solitude

Loneliness and Solitude

“Americans are facing an epidemic of loneliness, an “underappreciated public health crisis” that needs to be brought to light, said Surgeon General Vivek Murthy in a statement last week. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, about half of adults in the country reported...

Presence: a Practice and a Gift

Presence: a Practice and a Gift

What is Presence?   If you look up a definition of “presence,” you will find something obvious along the lines of “the state or condition of being present.” And “being present” is “the state of existing or occurring now.” If we are content with that … end of...

What does Home mean to you?

What does Home mean to you?

  “Home” is such a powerful and evocative word – in the realm of the psyche, and in spirituality and religion as well. Before you read any further, I invite you to sit with this word for a few moments: what memories, feelings, sensations, or images does it evoke...

Life Journeys, outward and inward

Life Journeys, outward and inward

  “Life is a journey.” A familiar metaphor. Whatever the external features, I see this as essentially a journey of meaning-making. The meanings that we find in life begin with our earliest experiences. Even before we have language, we might say there are implicit...

“Don’t worry – be happy”?

“Don’t worry – be happy”?

I Worried by Mary Oliver I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers flow in the right direction, will the earth turn as it was taught, and if not how shall I correct it? Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven, can I do better? Will I ever be able to...

Bridging Divides #2: conflicts in spiritual life

Bridging Divides #2: conflicts in spiritual life

As I begin this reflection, I'm aware that I bring with me a basic assumption: our spiritual life is intimately connected with our psychosocial life. Yes, the spiritual dimension  extends beyond/deeper than the psychological, but they are often intertwined. (Or as the...

Bridging the Divides: exploring our inner conflicts

Bridging the Divides: exploring our inner conflicts

Divisions make headlines. Conflicts draw attention. Every now and then bridge-building makes the news, but… not for long. I think many of us realize that whether or not something makes the headlines, we need bridges these days. I have been drawn to the metaphor of...