{For the beginning of this series, click HERE} Last week clouds parted and heavenly choirs let loose in the Willamette Valley, and I took my first walk in a month. I’m usually a brisk, determined walker. But I walked three blocks in the time I normally walk ten, wearing my cushiest slides for shock absorption. Many daffodils were on display and I shared a stare-down with a squirrel who was apparently unfazed by my presence. That’s how slow I was... Read more
{For the beginning of this series, click HERE} A Buddhist friend once shared a technique she uses to manage stress in difficult circumstances: “walk slowly.” I have tried at times, and it helps. It is also opposite of what until recently I did under stress, when I’d rush around like I’d quickly get to peace-and-quiet if I got things done quickly. In the midst of my current flare-up of chronic illness, I’m walking slowly. It’s fairly easy to remember when... Read more
{Read the beginning of this series HERE} My bed now faces the large window. The large window, now naked of sheers. If I must be in bed to heal—to heed the body’s limitations, I must have the best view from my window. While I’ve had far better views (for almost a year, the Pacific Ocean, for over a decade, wooded hills), I do see sky and the low branches of two large trees. The tree out the large window has bark... Read more
My chronic-illness crash came the day my husband fell. Three days earlier we’d driven to Willamette Falls hospital at five in the morning so a surgeon could repair his epically misshapen spine. Ed’s post-surgery recovery had proven challenging; but on this morning as he shuffled from the bedroom to the bathroom with the help of a walker, I watched as he began to shake. Then as I implored, “Don’t fall. Just don’t fall,” he went ashen and crumbled to his... Read more
There is something archaeological about moving—the artifacts of past lives and forgotten experiences we unearth, the evidence of emotional layers long since covered over. When I moved in 2019, I came across a 4×6” piece of paper on which I’d written in large letters, “God is in the obstacle.” The words were likely written four or five years earlier, tacked to the edge of my bathroom mirror so I could let the meaning sink in. By the time I found... Read more
“The psalmist doesn’t try to explain evil. He doesn’t try to minimize evil. He simply says he will not fear evil. …When somebody takes your hand in the dark, you’re not afraid of the dark anymore.” Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark As I write this (composed in 2017), I ride rapids of fear over a family situation. The threat of real evil and injustice that looms threateningly over many has telescoped in on someone I love, and it tests me.... Read more
I keep stumbling upon the necessity of social connection. In news stories on children’s mental health; stories about memory function and what preserves it; stories about recovery from addiction. The potent prescription in each case, based on the mounting research of social scientists, is connection and community. We seem to need it like air, food, water, if we are to thrive. And really, we increasingly aren’t so good at it—if statistics hold water. The reverberations of this message came to... Read more
At times my response to music is Pavlovian. Particular songs can evoke a reaction in me almost before the notes reach my brain, transporting me to times or emotional experiences instantaneously. And of all songs, certain 80s ballads are most potent in this way. Somehow those songs so fully take me back to love-sick adolescence that hearing them makes me want to stop everything I am doing and slow dance. Once again, I feel the song’s force on my fourteen-year-old... Read more
In a paradoxical saying, Jesus says, “…whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it .” Does this agree with your experience? Have you found that the hard practice of “losing your life in order to find it,” strengthening your ethical musculature by doing the difficult, right thing—even when it is costly—is how you’ve found your way? When it comes to ethics, we generally start with tiny acts of... Read more
The passage in this Sunday’s lectionary gospel intrigues (Mt 5:21-37). In it, Jesus tells his audience to get to the heart of the matter; the law is important, but not enough. Yet in Mt 5:21-37, what Jesus seems to set out as ‘the heart of the matter’ sounds impossible. How are we to never anger, never curse someone or call them an idiot, never look lustfully at someone, never have unreconciled conflict with others, never have marriages end, never make... Read more
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