In preparing to launch The Release this October, I’m dizzied by the ironies of releasing a book about releasing creative work. If ever there were an opportunity to heed my own advice! So between now and then I thought I’d share some excerpts, in part to give you a foretaste but mostly to remind myself. The Release shares spiritual …
Well, friends, my decades-long obsession with revision has reached a new extreme. I’ve shamelessly messed with another author’s work. Is this even allowed? When my mother died, her study group was preparing to read Teilhard’s Divine Milieu. I picked up her beat-up paperback copy just as I began a two-year formation program in contemplative Christianity. One day my teachers …
These glorious summer mornings, I grab my cereal bowl and head out first thing for garden strawberries, blueberries, and, dripping from the brambles, raspberries like red wine. The sun heats my neck, the chilly breeze raises my hairs, the exuberant sparrows greet me, and I snack right there, bursts of pungent sweet obliterating all else. …
When I turned fifty I did a ten-day silent retreat at the Benedictine monastery at Snowmass, Colorado, an immersion in a Christian form of meditation called Centering Prayer. The retreat was hard. At 5:15 a.m., under a black bowl of stars, I trekked a quarter mile up an icy hill banked by snow, huffing from …
At my daughter’s swim lesson a few years ago, an enthusiastic teacher stood hip-deep in the pool with a plastic clipboard, laminated sheet, and wax pencil. The eight-year-olds water-wheeled by, chins awkwardly raised above the surface in desperate attempts to doggy paddle their way through the crawl. As they passed he shouted, “Relax! Relax! Relax!” …
Through November and December, each night’s darkness clamps a degree tighter. Much as my rational brain knows I have a critical role to play in creation, I can’t explain my way out of despair. I am nothing. I am dust, a wisp of Elizabeth, here then gone. How can I carry on?
Four years ago, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, my neighbor slapped a bumper sticker on her car that read, “He’s not my president!” The dismissive, liberal sentiment has rankled me ever since. I was reminded of it two weeks ago, when white supremacists attacked the capitol at Trump’s urging, and the message “This is not who …
We are each a jewel in a mighty net. When we are unaware of this, disasters like the pandemic happen. When we are aware and bring whole, open hearts to our common plight, the net sparkles.
Sure I want the thrill of traveling, the relief of a break from Covid monotony, the fun of loved ones’ company, and the delicious feast, but at the core what I long for is the exchange of love that comes so easily when we’re together.
