Last April, as I may have mentioned, Peter and I planted a sort of mini-orchard of eight semi-dwarf apple trees. Our new old house sits on a main artery.  Behind the house are literally hundreds of acres of woods, filled with deer, red squirrels, bears, and every sort of tree–including a few old, abandoned apples, and even some lingering chestnut trees.  Before you’ve gone a quarter of a mile into the woods, the road sounds have faded away, and there’s... Read more

We have set aside most of our usual business agenda, and are holding instead something we are calling “Meeting to Hear God’s Call.” We are hearing a lot of messages about world suffering, economic injustice, environmental destruction.  We hear a lot of despair. Some of the messages feel rooted in Spirit to me; if others are, it is not in a way that I can discern.  I wrestle with my own anxiety over doing “enough.”  I know that I live... Read more

I appear to be completely incapable of writing my impressions of NEYM Sessions this year. *sigh* Read more

I’m here at New England Yearly Meeting Sessions, the big annual Quaker business session and gathering for worship.  This year is unusual, in that the agenda-driven business sessions that normally shape the rhythms of our time together have been subsumed, mostly, in a much more open-ended “Meeting to Hear God’s Call”–a kind of back-to-basics discernment session about our spiritual condition and where we may be being led by Spirit, as a body. My attention, however, has been much less on... Read more

So this is an overdue tally, and I’ve realized that I’d probably post here more often, and the posts would probably be more interesting to read, if I didn’t have the nagging feeling all the time that I “owe” the blog the latest tally. The idea of posting the weight of our plastic waste (recyclable or not) has been to provide a kind of focus point, really just to keep me aware and noticing my use of plastic.  Knowing I’m... Read more

It is a breezy summer day today, and I can smell water on the wind, though the air is dry and clear.  The world is full of rustling leaves, and I have set up a recliner underneath a maple tree, where I divide my attention between my novel and the beauty of the undersides of leaves. Want to know how beautiful my home in summer is?  It’s so beautiful that I’m actually reluctant to go to New England Yearly Meeting... Read more

The people over at 10:10 are worried–as you and I should be (and as the Senate should be too even though they don’t seem to be yet) about global warming. The 10:10 initiative started as an attempt to get the British to band together and decide to cut our carbon emissions by 10% this year–2010, so 10:10, get it?  The idea was that they were going to encourage everybody to cut emissions by 10%–schools should do it, corporations should do... Read more

Here it is, a little before dawn, at the turning of the Wheel of the Year.  It is nearly Lammas, and I am awake early, listening to birdsong.  The highway rush of traffic outside my house has not yet begun, so early on this Sunday morning, but the birds are in full chorus, and I cannot sleep. I am awake, and I can feel the turning of the Wheel.  Summer is already beginning the downhill slope toward fall, and my... Read more

There’s a story I heard once, about a couple of enlightened Zen masters.  One of them goes to see the other one rainy morning, and when he gets there, the one he’s come to see says to him, “When you came to see me today, did you leave your umbrella on the right side of your shoes, or the left?” The visitor realizes he doesn’t know, and that he doesn’t know because he wasn’t fully present when he put down... Read more