Lifesaving Lines: What the Living Do, by Marie Howe

Two great lines for the price of one (it is Christmas, after all) this week, from Marie Howe’s extraordinary poem … More

In search of beginner’s mind

As I come back to this blog, I am looking to try and inhabit what Zen practitioners call beginner’s mind. … More

Though you may disappear, you’re not forgotten hereAnd I will say to you, I will do what I can do … More

I had bumped into a friend at the cash machine. We greeted each other, as we always do, with a … More

Here are the blog posts that you read most in 2020 As I click through the links I am surprised … More

Third Sunday in Advent Today I pause from giving you updates from grief’s front line and take a leaf from … More

Harold Budd, May 24, 1936 – December 8, 2020 I am reposting this piece today in memory of Harold Budd, … More

The Sky Over My Mother’s House It is a July night scented with gardenias. The moon and stars shine hiding … More

First There is a holiness to exhaustion is what I keep telling myself, filling out the form so my TA … More

The unexamined life’s no different from … More

I have walked into the grief. I have walked into brave space, mine and others’. I have sat in … More

I am tired. Though I write from a place of privilege and of safety, I am tired. Tired of feeling … More

We never keep to the present. We recall the past; we anticipate the future as if we found … More

The Layers I have walked through many lives, some of them my own, and I am not who I … More

I can’t be alone in experiencing the coronavirus crisis and resulting lockdown as something of an infringement on my … More

My concentration has not been all that it might have been recently. Loved ones are suffering. Some with this thing, … More

Practice To weep unbidden, to wake at night in order to weep, to wait for the whisker on the face … More

Any Common Desolation can be enough to make you look upat the yellowed leaves of the apple tree, the fewthat … More