Put It Together
One of the gifts Dennis gave me for Christmas is a one-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle. It was on my Amazon wishlist, because I’ve learned that not all puzzles are created equal, and if I want one that won’t drive me crazy,…
Be Who You Are
I used to struggle to call myself a writer, an artist, a photographer. Didn’t I have to make money at something to be that?Even if I did make money at it, did the label really fit? Sometimes I forgot that…
Heliocentric
Laughing at Icarus as you watched him fall,you built your fortress: a heavy investment in happiness.Imagining a life of light suffusing the courtyard,you made the walls high and covered the ground with mirrors. But the sun will not be told…
The Importance of Being Heard and Acknowledged
Yesterday I shared a few paragraphs from Alice Miller’s The Body Never Lies. Today you get different writers, but the focus is the same: the conflict between the unconscious mind and the conscious mind that threatens to break us. In What My…
Free Yourself
Early in life, we build cages to protect ourselves. From the inside they look the way Wonder Woman’s jet does from the outside: invisible. Sometimes other people see what we’ve built and furnished and comfortably live inside, but in order…
Autry’s Humility
It was love and it was desperation.It was need and pure charity. It wasn’t perfect. Only God is. But it was enough to save a life. Thank you, Reynolds Price, for writing “Endless Mountains.” Thank you, Mom, Dad, God? Whoever…
Silent War
I have been engaged in a war since birth, as has each and every one of you. I bet you didn’t know that. Don’t feel bad; neither did I. The enemy is good. It has endless resources, recruits, and weapons…
What State Do You Live In?
My writing used to be characterized by perfect first sentences. Dennis would marvel at the way I’d struggle until a deadline to write something, then, at the last minute, craft the perfect opening line and have all the other words…
What We Carry
The biggest digital camera I own, an Olympus E-M1X, is on my desk (it even has a flash attached) because I didn’t put away last night after downloading the memory card. I had brought the camera to my son’s place…
Either Life is Precious or It’s Not
How can causing anything like this ever be justified? [Image shared on Instagram by @m.z.gaza]
Where Meaning LIVES
We spend minutes, days, years,as if we are keeping score. Did you read the book,ace the test,.graduate? Who lives longest?Who keeps it together until...death do us part? How long until the nest is empty,the career is history,what you’ve sown is…
Three Reminders
Conformity to a religion and adherence to its dictates neither indicates nor proves an authentic, healthy, loving relationship with God or with other humans (sometimes referred to as “neighbors”). Fear is not love. Sometimes ugly art is absolutely necessary.
