I am tired of those who swill their head in a bucket and claim there is no God or Good or Beauty to be had.   I come from a tribe of survivors who love life more than the hardships they’ve been dealt. And we have found each other the way rivers find the sea.   We know pain, fear and struggle, like dark fish nibbling at our bottom. But have grown love, faith and will like barnacles, razored out... Read more

The train slammed into the station, injuring hundreds. The engineer was critically hurt. People toppled over each other, bouncing across seats and against windows. There was blood and glass everywhere. One woman shimmied her way to the platform when part of the station ceiling fell, pinning her. She thought she would die. Then the hands of fellow passengers lifted her, one to another, and she was saved. Later, she wanted to say thank you but didn’t know who to thank.... Read more

Where do all the forgotten promises land? “I would never hurt you.” “I will love you forever.” “What’s mine is yours.”   I have been on both sides.   Sometimes in our frailty we don’t follow through. We simply don’t deliver. But often, we promise what can’t be promised.   It’s not a matter of lying. Though sometimes we lie. More that the hawk’s wings can’t cover the sky.   A Question to Walk With: In conversation with a loved... Read more

For example, the toaster needs to be cleaned, and taking it apart, the last screw loses its thread, and I can’t take the bottom off completely or put it back together. But it was my grandmother’s toaster, and I’m not ready to get another. But no one will fix it, and I can’t figure out how to. So I stop having toast for a month until I can accept it’s time to let it go. And somehow, though I feared... Read more

If you can’t sleep or look away from all that’s going on, then you haven’t done enough. I know that’s not helpful. But we have to accept this so we can do better the next time. We have to stand up before someone tells someone else they don’t belong. We need to look for the one who is lost before they become a fugitive. We must give a voice to kindness before people forget what it means. So if you... Read more

As you pour milk on your cereal, I am grateful for the sound of milk flowing over dried grain, for the peace that lets us wake and eat together, to stare at each other in silence like small animals. I am aware how safely tumbled through Eternity we are. Not to be hunted from birth. Or chased into the forest and forced to part. Or beaten for a secret some warlord thinks we’re hiding. I eat my toast and close... Read more

Delayed by storms, I’m having latkes in a hotel and you all come flooding back to me. Grandma pressing them with an old spatula on her Brooklyn stove. Dad saying, “Ma, you’re making enough for an army.” And Mom having a cigarette in the corner, arms folded, back against the wall.   In my sixty-sixth year, the smell of latkes makes me feel you mother, a year after your death. I miss what we never had.   You were always... Read more

The tops of clouds that no one sees illuminated by the sun.   The inside of the heart that no one sees softened by the soul.   The calm waiting at the center of all silence.   The warmth waiting at the center of all feeling.   The coolness waiting at the bottom of a lake.   The emptiness waiting at the bottom of all ideas.   The first sign of light that stirs birds to sing.   The wordless... Read more

The proper function of memory is to re-member, to put the members or parts of our life back together. We often get lost in reliving the past, when the gift of memory is to knit things back together, to re-member the whole. In my thirties, I had a powerful dream that showed me this. I was stopping by my grandparents’ home in Baldwin, New York. They lived in a small brick house, just off Sunrise Highway. In the dream, there... Read more