Sorrow’s tears are not hewn from rock with axe like diamonds but fall like dew from the heart’s flower as it opens wide. Oh, my heart, soften— blossom full— let fall your precious gems. … [Read more...] about Sorrow’s Tears

“It’s nothing.” That’s what we learned first. All the other numbers were something. But not zero. Even though we could see how this big round circle looked like the moon or the sun or like God’s arms wrapped around us. But then the full truth came out. “It’s a place holder,” they said. If you put it behind one of those skinny lines called a one, or behind one of those squiggly … [Read more...] about Zero

My mind, can suddenly be abuzz with fear and confusion that swarm like mosquitoes rising from dead water to dive, careen, chase and devour all I have come to trust of the goodness and love I have been shown. I hear that minds are like this— harboring hives of insanity, waiting to rise like a thick cloud, blocking the light, mocking grace, attacking vulnerability’s … [Read more...] about Made Whole Again

I am not so much growing and developing, as being undone, reduced. Unlike machines taken apart, or sauces cooked down, I have the capacity to horde my dragon treasure and resist what feels like loss. But the gentle Un-Maker is decades patient— daily persistent— working in me to loosen my grip, lighten my load. Elementals. Essentials. Let all else go. … [Read more...] about Undone

The maple shed her golden garment disrobing piece by piece to stand through winter’s storm unprotected, unadorned— a gnarled skeleton draped in ancient, ill-fitted skin. Her exposure awakens an ache of awe in me. Naked and unashamed she stands. Breathless, I gaze at such beauty. … [Read more...] about Unashamed

It is prayer, her sharing and my listening with interest to the details of her story—noticing her love of the memory of the taste and feel and look of a thing. It is blessing, her offering and my attending in affection and easy delight as I follow the weavings and wanderings of life through her eyes. It is joy, her gift of herself and my receiving of her in the beauty of her … [Read more...] about Listening

Today I said my good-byes to the trees that guard our street and populate the nearby park. I ought to know them by name by now, but I guess I have been walking by them like they were residents in a nursing home— lined up in wheelchairs in the hallway and gathered in the social activity room, never hearing their stories, never pausing in wonder at all they have seen in their years, never … [Read more...] about Their Stories

the one thing we do not ever want to be true the great terror that has chased us for years the loss we think we cannot bear to suffer the door we hoped never to open the path we find when all others lead to dead ends the crack in our dungeon wall allowing in light the gift we relinquish our illusions to receive the weight lifted from our chests making room for … [Read more...] about We Admitted We Were Powerless

What if we saw our faces, our bodies as the canvases they are, telling our story over time in their etchings and changes, like the walls of a great canyon shaped by the caresses of the wind, carved by the movements of the water? What if we cherished this story and its record, written in our skin embedded in the caverns of our heart? What if we knew it to be a sacred telling, one … [Read more...] about The Beauty

I sit near the window in the diner, wrap hands around a warm white mug, and gaze back across the boulevard to the hospital, aware that this day’s solo wait for my love is an early drill of things to come. Aware that as sure as winds sweep riotous autumn leaves from the trees, as sure as migrating geese wing their way out of sight, today’s wait during a routine screening will … [Read more...] about One Day