Corrective Lenses
I’ve known many miracles, a few even supernatural and profoundly transformative. As ordinary and as human as they seem, today I want to proclaim the holy miracle of corrective lenses.
Enduring the Discomfort of Writing
A writer’s capacity to tolerate discomfort, along with violent busts of elation and anguish, determines how deeply and for how long he or she can reside in the generative state.
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Riding the See-Saw
The truth of a situation always requires us to embrace complexity.
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What Others Think–What I Think–No Thought
Even an audience of one may be one too many. The self that is vigilant in me is also my monkey mind, and my spiritual practice involves releasing this self again and again. What if the self of my most intimate writing isn’t my real self?
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Merton’s Adam
While I utterly reject the notion that I was born a sinner, I struggle daily with the falseness that masks what I’m sure is my real essence.
Intercourse with the World
The main drama of memoir is not what happened in the past but what happens when we consider the past and allow ourselves to be changed by the consideration.
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Loving Through Creation
Love felt is beautiful, but love expressed, love enacted, love made into something, is divine. This is how God is, and how God becomes.
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Beyond Hope
Immediately inside me an old battle revved up: Keep hope! screamed one voice; Be realistic! screamed the other. Hope buoys the spirits, motivates, and reminds us to stay open to possibility—all of which I wanted, for me and my mom. Reality, however, is real.
Writing as Deep Listening
Every story has a hidden life—a soul, if you will. How writers tend this soul significantly affects our work and our well-being. This tending is really active listening. It’s both willful, sprung from the self, and responsive, heeding that life-force beyond the story and its readership.
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Original Immaturity
I began to see the human journey as simply growing up. We’re born with original immaturity. Kids throw toys in the toilet. Our task is to develop into our fullest, flourishing, interconnected Self, which is the opposite of the small, grasping, individualistic self.
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