Fear Drives Out Love
Today, I was not surprised to learn that “the exact meaning of the term” religion “is subject to debate among some scholars.” Of course it is. After all, if you control the language, you control minds and hearts, and once…
Questions or Answers: Take Your Pick
It seems to me that art is about asking questions. Science, on the other hand, is about chasing answers and then clinging to them. Science should be about asking questions, and many of us are programmed to believe it is,…
This is How I See it
A few days ago, I came across a heartbreaking video of a bloodied child from Palestine. The woman who shared it is rightly upset about the genocide going on under our noses. She wrote, “Tell me again how offensive and…
Open to Life
As I’ve written previously, I was raised Catholic and tried most of my life to get the right answers so I could be an outstanding one, but that wasn’t the end goal. The end goal was to get to heaven,…
Confession
After a Lifetime of Lies, It’s Time to Face the Truth I have been avoiding this post, but doing so is taking a physical toll, and I can’t put it off. A small, shivering wave of anxiety comes over me…
Being Honest with a Friend Should Not Require Courage
When my fourth child was almost a year old, I had an important conversation with a friend, but I had no idea, at the time, how important it would be. Perhaps I should look her up and reach out again,…
A Harsh Truth
A few months ago, I read Savage Wisdom by Adam Cam, after following him for a while on Instagram. The man is brutal (and he loves his four-letter words), but I’ve long found myself attracted to people who tell the harsh truth…
I Look Only if I Know There’s More to be Found
Few moments of my day (and night) are not filled with thoughts: self-analyzing ones; funny or ironic ones; important, life-changing ones; perceptions; understandings (often years in the making); meager ideas about dinner and getting the laundry in the dryer; connections…
How Many Will Make It Past the Prison Walls and Never Get Locked in Again?
Prisons We Choose to Live Inside Thoughts, conversations, experiences, memories, things that I’m reading are all coming together and leading me on. For Tolstoy, the self is not a system, but an aggregate. It is a cluster of habits and…
Which Way?
If Diamond had had to find out the riddle in order to see Mr. Raymond again, I doubt if he would ever have seen him. “Oh then,” I think I hear some little reader say, “he could not have been…
A New Way of Living
Today is the first day of my new life. It sounds dramatic, I know, but I spent my old life avoiding drama at all costs. So, let’s double down on the drama: everything I thought I knew was just guessing.…
A Madeleine Day
Will I ever retire Walking on Water: just leave it alone or give it away? I doubt it. It continues to speak to me, even though I would never think to include L’Engle in a list of my favorite writers.…