LETTING GO   After feeling driven my whole life something very near the center has unwound and I can no longer hurry through airports or return all my calls.   And sometimes people I barely know swim up like old worn fish to show me the map of their gills, and the one long gash of something they once swallowed, and how it has cut each breath since. And I am honored to warm them like a blanket. But when... Read more

IN THE SEA OF OTHERS   It’s next to impossible to do this alone. We need the loving truth of others to be well. Inevitably, some come with us and are forever changed while others watch as we’re forced out to sea. It’s the power of love that enables those who come along, where a language of experience is unearthed that can’t be translated to those who stay behind.   A Question to Walk With: Tell the story of someone... Read more

EVENTUALLY   We stop trying to carry all that we know as if it will protect us.   If lucky, we are forced to accept that under what we think is ours is the beginning of what no one owns.   At last, we are humbled to dip our face in the same well.   It is the look of your face and mine lifting from that well that frees me.   A Question to Walk With: Tell the story... Read more

ADRIFT   Everything is beautiful and I am so sad. This is how the heart makes a duet of wonder and grief. The light spraying through the lace of the fern is as delicate as the fibers of memory forming their web around the knot in my throat. The breeze makes the birds move from branch to branch as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh of... Read more

OCEAN OF SKY   The cloud shelf drifts toward what still seems possible and the trees throw up their arms wanting to follow and the Brazilian singer in the iPod is pleading with me to give up all that drags my heart. Now the sparrows out of nowhere dart in all directions like the tail of a sparkler set off in the beginning. And the singer a continent away sings. I don’t understand a word but feel him like a... Read more

MIDWAY IN OUR JOURNEY   Just when we’re softened by the years, when we have enough experience to see for ourselves, our maps are torn from us. This can be frightening, but there’s divine timing in the dissolution of a stubborn mind, the way an inlet waits on the last rock to crumble so it can find its destiny in the sea. Losing the way set out by others is necessary so we can discover for ourselves what it means... Read more

WHAT CAN I DO?   I was surprised when John, who helped save my life, came down with liver cancer. He had no interest in going through this the way I did. He didn’t want to talk. He just stared at me for hours. I so wanted to be there for him. All I could do was sit with him in silence. I read books while he slept, held his hand, tried to slow his breathing when he was agitated. All... Read more

KNOWING GOD   Oh lone crazed bird singing in the night—   you sing with your whole body while the rest of us sleep.   I go to close the window when my wife touches my arm and we listen.   You call out like a saint robbed of words.   Are you blind and trapped in a vision of sun?   Or do you simply see farther than the rest of us?   Do you see the light coming?... Read more

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