About a decade ago I had a dream about my impending death. It blew me open. For weeks afterward, I was saturated by a silence so pervasive it felt like a presence. Once it dissipated, I desperately wanted it back and so plunged head-first into an ancient Christian form of silent meditation. I also began writing […]
The following list is compiled from readers of my 2024 Year in Books list, which you can read here, and from members of the Eye of the Heart Center for Creative Contemplation’s Writing Community. If you’re looking for fellow readers and writers, I’d love to see you there. Reading means to be ready to catch
Books Recommended by Readers Read More »
Your writing projects are your babies. Sometimes you dream about them before conception; sometimes they emerge in a passionate rush. You raise them with care, patience, frustration, labor, and abiding joy. Like child-rearing, revision is long, arduous, and meaningful. Often it seems the kid will never grow up. Then your baby is grown. The project is complete—more or less. It is
Here’s a peek into THE RELEASE, which comes out this October! Read More »
Perhaps because my first big writing project gave me room to articulate my sexual longings, come out bisexual, and figure out the implications for my Christian faith; perhaps because I’m drawn to spiritual and therefore intimate subjects, my first drafts (and often second and third) I tend to write for no one but me. Of course
Writing in the Cloud of Privacy & Unknowing Read More »
After a year of drafting my first young adult novel, I ran it past my trusty writing group (of twenty-five years!) and was unsurprised at their critique: The plot doesn’t yet spring from the desires of my characters. “What’s at stake for them?” my colleagues asked. “What are their burning passions? What obstacles do they face?
There’s an old Taoist story about a farmer whose horse ran away. His neighbors on hearing this came to him and said, sympathetically, “Such bad luck!” “We’ll see,” the farmer replied. The next day the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “So wonderful!” the neighbors exclaimed. “We’ll see,” the farmer said. Then
Receive the Blessings of Failure Read More »
Each and every one of us ordinary people has the capacity to create beauty.
Attending the Lotus Read More »
All creative work is becoming; it is more alive or less alive, and our job as artists is to nurture life.
Highs in the negative digits. Ice so cold it squeaks when you skate on it. Gwyn pedaling the tagalong with a scarf completely covering her face. Minnesota January: Not for the fainthearted. But it’s perfect for those (like myself) who love hearth and home, who in the glory days of summer dreamt about sorting photos
The Interior Hearth Read More »
I can’t remember the last time I finished a book, thought to myself, “I will never be the same again,” and began rereading to figure out why. Richard Rohr’s Immortal Diamond did this to me. What changed? Rohr reframed the story of Jesus—the Christian story—as an invitation for human transformation. Writing this makes it sound