In 2006, in a time of precarity and despair, some magic happened upon me. Shortly before, as I expressed to a friend heartache about a lost relationship, she said, “Sometimes you don’t get what you want. You get what you need instead.” A few months later, as I was working on building a cottage in the woods, I realized what I needed most was a home. And a home transpired. First, the land. It was the first property I looked... Read more
As I approach accompanied by crickets, the sky’s palette ranges from turquoise to dark violet; above, a few stars. The temperature of the day reached 90. Growing up in northern California where summer days exceeded 100, I came to love evenings following hot days, when I could walk outside with bare arms, feeling the brush of warmth and smelling night’s incense. Such is the experience this evening in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. In the distance, I see a handful of people... Read more
I recently heard a Vox podcast about regret. The interviewee, Daniel Pink, wrote a book on the subject, reflecting on regret’s transformative power. Regret is an emotion that—if we face it honestly—has the potency to turn us around, to make us go another way. We’ve all been there. When I look back to times I’ve done wrong, it isn’t the stereotypical slip-ups that stand out to me—the sex, lies, or other excesses held up as “the bad sins” in our... Read more
It is one of those weeks where everywhere I turn, folks are talking about the “epidemic of loneliness,” including an excellent recent interview of Robert Putnam, author of the book Bowling Alone (published in 2000), who said: “…what we’ve seen over the last 25 years since the book was published is a deepening and intensifying of that trend. We become more socially isolated, and we can see it in every facet of our lives.” The breakdown of connections to traditional... Read more
Roughly seven years ago; late-summer day under a New Mexico sky, the blue of which rivals all sky. Blue like taffeta. Like a French painter’s dream of sky—which is what lured painters to Taos in the 20th century to eventually become the “Taos School,” setting stage for an influx of artists and intellectuals including the likes of Georgia O’Keefe and D. H. Lawrence. I drove out of Taos where I’d retreated to an adobe, pond-side casita on a farm, attempting... Read more
The most inspiring words I’ve heard in the past several years are from a speech Ursula LeGuin delivered toward the end of her life. She said: “I think hard times are coming, when we will be wanting the voices of writers who can see alternatives to how we live now, and can see through our fear-stricken society and its obsessive technologies, to other ways of being. And even imagine some real grounds for hope. We will need writers who can... Read more
If you have yet to dip your toes into Succession, the HBO series that ended in 2023 (subsequently sweeping the Emmy nominations), now might be a good time to watch. Currently, the Rupert Murdoch family who the series was purportedly based on is acting out an all-too-real succession battle of its own—a battle that could impact all of us due to the reach and influence of Murdoch’s media empire (including Fox News). I have to admit, I wasn’t an instant... Read more
{Meditation on John 6:24-35}. Imagine that someone you love is terminally ill, needing healing, and you hear that a great teacher has come to a town near you, someone who also has a reputation for healing. So you pack the car with everything you and your family will need for the afternoon, and head out to where this person will be speaking. But when you arrive, you see that thousands of other people had the same idea. You patiently wait... Read more
In a guestroom, I have a little wooden plaque that says, “Just live your little life.” I like this admonition. I also need it. Most of us do have little lives. Not unimportant or trivial lives, but lives that don’t rock the world. There are the powerful, influential people who usher in movements or manage large organizations or invent cures or other inventions. There are even the select few who are well-known as creatives or politicians or businesspersons. Then there... Read more
I’ve long appreciated Yuval Noah Harari’s book Sapiens(2014). And I recently enjoyed a discussion of his newer book Unstoppable Us, How Humans Took Over the World, on a favorite podcast ‘The Gray Area with Sean Illing.’ Harari makes some similar assertions in these books, namely that humans have transcended other species because—of all things—we were able to pass on great stories. Sacred stories. Shared stories. Basically, we prevail because we spin a good yarn; and a good yarn builds cohesion, allowing... Read more
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