I reported a dream image yesterday to my friend Nina, who had been with me at Wisdom School. I did not understand the image at all.
I had a collection of small stones like the ones we have gathered from the beaches of the Great Lakes. I was supposed to eat them.
Nina immediately made the link to Logion 77 of the Gospel of Thomas, which was a main text for the Wisdom School: Continue reading
A few months ago my husband was diagnosed with a non-aggressive form of prostate cancer. The doctors assure him this “little bit of cancer” is nothing to worry about; it just needs to be monitored for now. “My advice to you,” his primary care physician told him, “is to forget you have cancer. Live your life. At this rate you won’t die from prostate cancer for at least 15 or 20 years and something else could get you first.” Continue reading
This fall has been so beautiful I can hardly stand it. It is so beautiful it makes me weep. That is what happens, I guess, to the aging body and spirit. You become susceptible. I am developing a particular sensitivity to wonder. Continue reading
This trip happened because of a fight. I thought my husband had agreed to meet me in North Carolina next month after my week of Wisdom School with Cynthia Bourgeault. We could do the B&B thing, I could share all my newly acquired wisdom with him, yada yada. Belatedly he happened to remember that he had a choir concert on the aforeplanned weekend. For some reason I took this to mean that I did not come first in his life. We fought. Or rather, I blew up and he looked puzzled. Continue reading
The flowers I arranged for an altar last weekend are kind of a mess today because they are just about to go. The glads are exploding in bloom to their very tips but, lower on the stalks, which are finding it harder to stay upright, the first blooms have already shriveled and dropped. The sunflower petals, crisp and smooth a few days ago, are twisting and falling. The goldenrod is dusted with its own pollen and drooping at the tips. Continue reading
It is the first morning of Wood Thrush song, so loud and close I don’t recognize it at first. The flute-like whistles sound shrieky up close, but up close you can also hear the quiet churrs and burbles that follow the whistles. It is stunning. I sit on the porch and start to write but I can’t write while that is going on.
As I write that I can’t write, the song stops and then takes up again much farther off, as if the thrush is respecting my territory. Continue reading
At my infrequent appointments, my hairdresser always asks me what I am doing the next weekend. This standard conversational gambit is usually fruitful for her, I’m sure. But I seldom have any plans to report. Last week, however, I did. “My husband and I are going birding,” I said.
“What’s that?” she said. Continue reading
I’m looking at green so intense it almost hurts the eyes. It is so green you can hear it. The frog and toad chorus has begun today. Spring woods after rainstorm is exactly the time and place to send out mating calls. I could sit here all day, taking it in.
Continue reading
Antoine, Alfie, and a tame orphan civet
A year ago, in the middle of a winter as vicious and snowy as this one, my friend Dawn and I made an agreement. She would retire from her job at the end of December 2014, and, as soon after that as possible, we would travel together to somewhere out of the country. Somewhere warm.
This trip would be no simple jaunt, however, because Dawn has multiple sclerosis. Continue reading
I am just back from a two-week safari (Swahili for “trip”) to South Africa. What can I say? It was impressive and I learned a lot.
Yesterday I pulled aside the curtain of jetlag and looked at my pictures. Animals in Kruger National Park, flora and scenery in Cape Town, and the craggy southern tip of Africa that forms a dramatic end to the continent. Here are a few. Continue reading
the practical mystic 