In just a few days I’m making a huge move in my life and where I live. I’ll be moving from Lake County in Northern California to St. Louis, Missouri where I’ll just be an hour away from my father. Pop, 91, lives just across the river in SW Illinois, about 6 miles upriver from…
She walks in beauty, like the night.—Lord Byron Walking the Beauty Way. –Navajo I stand in my Mother’s shoes—a few sizes too big for me. Mother is dead and gone. She has passed over. I stand in my sister’s shoes—a few sizes too big for me. Julia is dead and gone. She has passed over….
In a workshop on sacred space, I drew a rainbow vortex, holding 4-6 crayons in my hand at a time. I loved that part. Then, looking at my crayon drawing, I wrote this letter to the rainbow vortex. Later I cut the vortex into a spiral and pasted it into my journal, folding in switchbacks…
The earth is old. Nothing lasts. All life is kin. Different eyes perceive different worlds, and much remains hidden. Ours is an age of extinctions; ours are the hands of the destroyers. Grief and beauty are knotted together. Curiosity and imagination are fundamental human forces. So are fear and hatred, passion and compassion. None of…
June 6th, all my natural-born life, has been my parents’ wedding anniversary. Mother died last year on May 1st, 2006, very close to what would have been their 64th wedding anniversary. June 6th is one of the few dates of the year that I have not only memorized, but have etched in some deep recess…
Maybe we need different places for different phases of our lives. Maybe cherished places remain alive inside us even if we have to move on—our attachment to the earth not thinned, but widened. ~Deborah Tall , “From Where We Stand: Recovering a Sense of Place” ~
Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak, Whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it break. (Shakespeare, Macbeth, 5.1.50-1)
“We are not born all at once, but by bits. The body first, and the spirit later; and the birth and growth of the spirit, in those who are attentive to their own inner life, are slow and exceedingly painful. Our mothers are racked with the pains of our physical birth; we ourselves suffer the…
Mother shooed us into the cellar. I turned my pockets inside out and showed her my discoveries. While we waited for the storm to pass, my mother told us stories: saints’ bones preserved in crypts of faraway cathedrals; healers who told the future by throwing bones as if they were dice; and air-raid cellars in…
I fingered the treasures in my pocket as I strolled to the tree that hovered over the creek. It had no soil under it. Roots dangled through the air, then plunged straight and deep into rushing water. Fish swam between roots. With soil between roots the tree had sheltered a rabbit burrow, not swimming fish….