Easter is in the rear view mirror now, but I can’t shake the whole concept of sacrifice – giving up something for the sake of something else. Like a kind of shawl, it’s hanging around my shoulders. Only it’s not made of all the same material: I look to my right, and there’s a glowing warmth to the fabric…but turn the other way, and I see dark and threadbare material, offering no comfort at all. Can such different experiences really … Read More
Here’s a recently updated essay about Easter that you may find familiar, from a previous appearance in this blog. (A sign that it’s time for me to wind all this business up?) Anyway, yesterday it was published in THE CONCORD MONITOR, with a different picture than the one I include here. If you’d like to see how it looked in the paper, here’s the link: “Just think of it as one service that spreads out over three days,” my husband … Read More
Passover is well underway, and my husband is out washing feet tonight because it’s also Maundy Thursday. Before Easter gets the best of us, at least around here, I want to cast a backward glance and try to offer up a little tribute to the UConn Huskies, to nostalgia, and to that pesky ambivalence about big-time sports. All at once, if I may. It was a little more than a week ago now that we enjoyed the back-to-back national championships … Read More
When our first son was born, a good friend and upstairs neighbor gave us a HUGE black and white mounted photograph of the philosopher William James. I’ll have to ask him again where he got it, but he always did move in highly intellectual circles. Anyway, we were thrilled to put the towering thing right in the corner of the baby’s bedroom, so that he could feel no pressure at all about growing up smart. In one packing episode or … Read More
Contrasting colors side-by-side, juxtapositions, jarring differences: these have been my bread and butter in this blog. Sometimes a kind of first cousin– let’s call it coincidence –comes around, wanting a little attention, too. With coincidence, there’s usually more of a gentle feeling – a kind of “Well, what do you know and isn’t this wonderful?” Two old friends getting on the same plane or a high school student inheriting a textbook with an uncle’s name in it. It’s in retrospect, … Read More
Isn’t it a little weird that the hit song “Let It Go” is from a movie called Frozen? I mean — one is all about fluidity and movement, the other about being stuck in one place. Maybe there’s something here I’m not getting. In any case, the lyrics have got me thinking about all the times I’ve experienced the need to push something aside or watch it evaporate, versus the times I’ve experienced the need to hold on to something … Read More
How far can religion go into the popular culture until it doesn’t even resemble religion at all? In my mind’s eye, I see a robed figure, walking with dignity, gradually being enveloped in a crowd of people who are shaking their arms, some dancing, and most definitely making a racket. When the robed figure starts acting the way the crowd does, we look closer, but we’re not altogether sure we like it. Look at this picture, for example. Isn’t … Read More
Is it possible to keep two independent melodies, or maybe even three or four, going in our heads at the same time? And, if it is possible, is it advisable? That is, can maintaining the integrity of each actually help to lift us out of the daily muddle? I think so. Unless, that is, I’m confused. Or maybe just eager to re-unite with my younger, more agile self. While we might think anyone who “hears voices” is likely just nuts, … Read More
Sometimes, on just a regular day, you find precisely the right cartoon. A few years from now, no doubt, I will look back on these times and say something like the first part of what this dog says. Here’s hoping I won’t also need to say the second part. In this household, we’re pretty familiar with barking; our dog Rocky likes to use it to make a point, emphatically — most often when he wants us to try to pick … Read More
Can there be any glory at all in stumbling, in things not going as planned, in mess ups? This has been the pressing question on my mind over the past few days, because I’ve been in the midst of some of the above and have felt, well, kind of de-railed from what it was I thought I was doing. With so many eyes on Sochi now, we’re ready to be thrilled by the magnificence of athletic displays….and to gasp with … Read More