We discover metaphors by surrendering our attention, by staying in honest conversation, and by listening to the quiet movements of life as they appear before us. Let me share a recent example. I was visiting Pine Manor in Lake Elsinore, CA, where I teach every year. My good friend Gail Warner founded and directs Pine Manor. She is a wise, old soul. I like to come a day early so that Gail and I can re-enter our lifelong conversation about... Read more
We are. But in the way that flowers are destined to open, or that waves are destined to fold on themselves and gather anew. Fate is not the arrow of our secret ambition, but the turning of a life around an unshakable center, the way the Earth turns on its axis in its endless journey around the sun. So, when I confess that we are meant for each other, I am not singling us out from the thousands... Read more
Does anything matter but seeing your smile return as we feel the sun come over us? Or watching you play with our dog in the yard? Or glimpsing you in your studio in the yellow light spinning a bowl? These moments are like glints of light off glass in an alley, or the quiver of wind rustling through peonies. They make visible a world that is always with us, even when it feels out of reach.... Read more
Along the way, people we love fall from the tightrope and vanish and we wonder, why not me? Then, there is a pandemic and thousands cough and die with no warning. Or simply getting older, the view widens but the path narrows. As if we’re dancing on the edge of a cliff. But it has always been this way. We are only now aware of it. This is what the ancients were honoring when they painted... Read more
For all the questions I’ve pressed the wise with, for all the places I thought I had to see, for all the birds I’ve envied as they glide out of view, for all I keep trying to hold up, though I’ve met those I love over things I have dropped—the moment I feel most tender is stepping in the dark over slippers and books to kiss you while you sleep. Once there, I can’t go on, or in, or out.... Read more
It could be someone you never had the courage to love, holding you in the night. Or talking all night with a lifelong friend, both of you lucid and hungry, the talk peeling, not adding up, but peeling into uncontrollable laughter and the smell of honey. It could be swimming deeper than ever, alongside iridescent fish, copying their wriggle for light. Or taking something apart so thoroughly—a car, a watch—that it never has to be put together... Read more
You taught me to keep a chisel sharp. You showed me on old pine, always the sample board. “Don’t stop in mid-stroke or the board will splinter.” “Once you start, keep pushing through.” You’d pick up the perfect shaving from the floor and rub it between your fingers. Your other hand would rub the grain revealed. How you’d smile. You went somewhere unreachable. When I read Plato years later, all his squawk about absolute forms, I knew that’s where you... Read more
Faith is an act of ultimate concern. —Paul Tillich By faith, I don’t mean obedience to any principle or doctrine or person, but more, a faith in life. Faith is our covenant with life no matter what befalls us. It is our belief that we are part of something larger than us. It is our commitment to let all that is larger than us be our teacher. What light is for plants and flowers, faith is for human souls. It... Read more
What I love about you most is how you become what you care for. You are eager to begin, but in no hurry to leave. And so, when you offered to build a bookcase in which my tall wooden Ganesh can look over me as I dive into the ancient swirl of secrets that are only secret because we refuse to become what we care for—it made me love you more. It took many seasons and you shared every step,... Read more
You ask, “How can I hold on?” I remember being forced to let go, to let the torrent take me beyond all I could imagine. You ask, “Are we doomed to repeat our mistakes?” I only know that when exhausted I could finally accept that we are privileged to have more than one chance to come alive. You ask, “Why is it all unbearable?” I want to rock you until you under- stand that the dark is there... Read more
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