God, Love, Gratitude, and My Own Soul
My therapist told me that the reason I never stop trying to help people is that I keep hoping someone will help me. While she is absolutely right, there is more to the story, and it’s a funny thing, but…
To What Authority Do You Bow?
Whose boots do you lick? Whose hand (or ass) do you kiss? Which idols do you worship? Until you figure who or what controls you, how they do it, and why you let them, you will never be free. I…
Not Letting It Go
A couple of months ago, in a conversation with a friend, I related the story of a recent conflict with someone close to me, and I concluded with the statement, “He stole my soul and I want it back.” The…
Why are Putting Your Life in Someone Else’s Hands?
You know who I don’t trust? People who say they don’t trust anyone. You’d be unable to function if you truly trusted no one. If you didn’t grow ALL of your food yourself, how would you eat? Why do you…
Not Good Enough
I’m not here to explain. By rights, I should have hit the Publish button after I typed in the period following “explain.” Nothing more is needed. But I always believed I needed watertight answers and too many words. It was…
Five Poems
Anything that feels like a school assignment pisses me off. Nothing, though, gets my blood boiling like being forced to keep a journal. In a college screenwriting class, the professor (whose arrogance rubbed me the wrong way pretty much from…
Row Your Boat
We are supposed to have a foot in this world and one in the spiritual realm: the sphere of God and angels, yes, but more than that: a “place” in which emotion guides us, where inner wisdom/knowing leads the way.…
250+ Ways to Wash Dishes
600,000 B.C. Can you even begin to wrap your head around how long ago that is and what life here on earth must have been like then? Are you thinking about dinosaurs? Maybe imagining a caveman carrying a club and…
I’ve Got News for You: Anger is Not a Sin
Why do I even have to write that? Because most people I know believe that it is (whether they realize it or not), and this belief—not anger, itself—has caused a great deal of pain. About a week ago, I decided…
A Satisfying Morning
More wonder in this wonder-filled world: the book beneath The Gift in my second-cup-of-coffee stack* turned out to be Soul Food: Nourishing Poems for Starved Minds, edited by Neil Astley and Pamela Robertson-Pearce, and the next poem presented for my…
The Gift of Art
My morning included a small scale existential crisis. Robert Bly’s Looking for Dragon Smoke, a book of essays on poetry, was at the top of today’s reading stack, and by the time I finished section three of the first essay,…
Love Now
“I’ll love you when you learn to obey me.”“I’ll love you when I have time for you.”“I’ll love you when you lose weight.”“I’ll love you when you think like I do.”“I’ll love you when you quit smoking.”“I’ll love you when…
