One thing that I’ve learned through marriage (the list is long) is that doing/ creating/ practicing some kind of art in your own individual way helps each partner to flourish, alone and also together. Nothing Really, or Really Something Yesterday at school, by the downstairs water fountain, I had a brief conversation with an 11th grader whom I had just met when I came into her English class. I went partly to give them a brush-up on the “Xello” platform … Read More
This post will be a departure from my “this in contrast to that” theme. The heat and humidity have had a warping effect, and so I might as well bend my own rules. What I’m setting out to do here is offer up, for your consideration, a few recently published works of fiction — first novels — by writers I am honored to know. My peeps are out there on the field, so you could say that I’m taking up … Read More
Over the past six months of the pandemic, we’ve heard the term “Alone Together” over and over again– for good reason, too. The whole time has brought such a weird mix of elements to our lives, and we need to keep reminding ourselves that, alongside the isolation we inevitably feel when cooped up and missing people who are dear to us, we are also in a shared experience that can break down barriers and generate power, even amidst terrible loss. … Read More
Taking the time to do—to give, really — an act of kindness is a little bit like choosing the right path in the woods…and helping to light someone else’s way, too. As it happens, my husband and I are about to cross paths, domestically speaking. He’s coming to the end of a three month plus sabbatical, going back to being a bishop who is closely attuned to the well-being of clergy and churches; I’m almost done with a three month … Read More
During this month of graduating seniors, burgeoning plants, and creatures newly born, are you also coming into your own? Are you just the same self you were last year at this time, or do you notice some small but significant differences in your inner landscape? It’s a personal question, I know, and you don’t really have to answer. But I can’t emerge from a year in a Memoir Incubator without asking it, at least of myself. And then, … Read More
In the kitchen, you can usually be quite sure if something is “done” or “not yet done” or “raw.” In the rest of life, though, telling whether something is where it needs to be, at a jumping off point or place of readiness and fruition, often gets a little more complex. A bit like a cook reaching for a favorite spice, my mother had a way of latching on to particular words and using them over and over, emphatically — … Read More
Trying to close in on finishing something like a first draft of my book in the next few weeks, I’m finding myself more aware than usual of the difference between writing and more quotidian matters. As he prepared to start his day the other morning, with the prospect of designing three different Easter weekend sermons on his mind, my husband said to me, “You may have noticed that the refrigerator door isn’t closing right.” What a guy. He … Read More
It’s the New Year, so will it be the New You? Sounds like too tall an order, probably. A better bet will most likely be nourishing our own sense of at-home-ness within ourselves. Sure, we can and probably should do some minor repairs, address our flaws, try to meet a higher standard; but essentially, we’re stuck with our very own personhood. Can we think of new ways to flourish, sometimes depending on not another soul? It’s here that I’ll make … Read More