Reading and Writing–For the Love of It
Perhaps we writers love to write because we love loving, and we intuit that writing exercises this capacity.
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Spiritual Practice
Writing and Forgiveness
Forgiving ourselves and proceeding regardless is a fundamental part of living fully, and writing well.
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Rampant Generosity
The rampant generosity of hearty plants invites the attentive gardener into even more generosity in an exponential increase of wealth. This is the earth’s scripture, the wisdom that’s ripe for the taking.
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Blind Faith
I can’t even write the words “blind faith” without my skin crawling. Despite forty-six years of attending church and more than half that time intentionally engaged in spiritual practices, enough of me is rational, academic, and post-modern that I’m unwilling to “blindly” do anything.
In Dialogue
We can be in dialogue with our whole being, accepting what life makes of us, taking what has happened, and making of it something new. From this dynamic exchange comes aliveness—our own and the world’s.
Paper Doll Spirituality
I thought of her over the long weekend without me, pouring all her energy into this paper representation of our family; I imagined her bent over the dining room table, making her passionate “I love you—I love you—I love you” into little flat people she could give hair-dos and tenderly clothe, and I saw finally how we’d each in our own ways been praying all weekend, placing our hearts into this vast, connected, and holy family.
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Undoing the Single Story
Revision insists that we reject the single story in favor of layered, complex, and contradictory stories. Just as intimacy and awareness break down our stereotypes, intimacy with and awareness of our material break apart our over-simplifications and half-truths.
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Aroused to Love
This morning I stumbled on some contrary advice from Teresa of Avila, that light-hearted, contrarian mystic. Don’t try to still the mind and create a contrived state of recollection, she chides. Such attempts are likely to backfire.
Creative Rest
All writers know the magic of putting aside a problematic passage (for a nap or a walk) only to have the solution appear unbidden. This turning away from writing is, paradoxically, an essential part of writing.
Feeling like a Fraud–or Not
I’ve been bowled over by how many people have shared with me that they feel like frauds. It plagues artists, for whom there’s always some level of public recognition to strive for that might finally affirm our worth; it plagues leaders, who must stand in front of people who will inevitably question their authority; it plagues parents, who feel they should know what they’re doing and don’t. Is there anyone who doesn’t at some point feel fraudulent?!
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