SITTING NEAR A SMOKE BUSH It was feathery and in bloom. Bees were circling. Children were playing. Paper plates were blowing across the lawn. He said his father’s passing was hard and ugly. Sometimes, he wondered if loving others was worth it. It was clear by how his face softened that this was offered by someone who can’t stop loving. We shared some more history. It’s true, I thought, the cost is great, but without loss and joy prying our... Read more

On Saturday night, February 20, there was a mass shooting here in Kalamazoo. Now the violence has struck in our own streets. It is heartbreaking. We are stunned and don’t yet know who the victims are. In aftermath we, like everyone else in the world, must now choose between caring for each other and striking out at each other. Charles Dickens began his novel A Tale of Two Cities with the sentence, “It was the best of times and the... Read more

COVENANT WITH TIME In silence or in crisis, we can put down the gun, bandage the wound, carry the water and share our bread. But under all that, all we can do is hold each other and listen. The one, an indispensable lifting. The other, an indispensable putting down. So when you fall, I will help you up. But when I fall on the inside, just sit with me and rub the cuts no one can see. This is how... Read more

Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces. I hope you enjoy this one. THE THIN MAGIC We’re just now climbing out of the ravine and so the guard around my heart is loosening and I cry easily. Stillness is showing its face, again. I almost lost you. Was forced to try it on. Your roots, growing in my heart for years, were... Read more

Having cancer in my mid-thirties unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths.  The following piece is an excerpt from the new expanded edition of my book Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, recently released by Sounds True. I hope it helps you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged. AS RACHEL WAKES I watch as you return from the tethered sleep of your surgery, and I realize that the things that... Read more

One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness.What follows is from the latest edition of my book Inside the Miracle. I hope it will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged. FOR MY BROTHER You were there when I had cancer and now you’ve carried Dad... Read more

One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness.What follows is from the latest edition of my book Inside the Miracle. I hope it will help you meet the transformation that waits in however you’re being forged. LETTER HOME You ask if anything’s changed. I write this in an... Read more

Sounds True recently published a new, expanded edition of Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness, which gathers twenty-eight years of my writing and teaching about suffering, healing, and wholeness, including thirty-nine new poems and prose pieces not yet published. One of the great transforming passages in my life was having cancer in my mid-thirties. This experience unraveled the way I see the world and made me a student of all spiritual paths. With a steadfast belief in our aliveness,... Read more