What if this were easy?
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I’m starting the new year with this question in mind. Oliver Burkeman, in Meditations for Mortals, suggests it as an approach to just about everything. Hear him out! It’s genius. “Not everything that is more difficult is more meritorious.” -Attributed…
Mary Oliver shows me the way. Where Does the Temple Begin, Where Does it End? There are things you can’t reach. But you can reach out to them, and all day long. The wind, the bird flying away. The idea…
Here’s a terrific non-traditional holiday read for you or someone on your gift list: The Tragedy of True Crime: Four Guilty Men and the Stories That Define Us, by John J. Lennon. I found it on the New York Times…
We don’t really know anyone else’s heart or mind. Or what they might be capable of. We know this – right? – if we’ve lived long enough. Ian McEwan’s new novel What We Can Know conveys this truth. The joy…
The language is not hard to understand – not difficult at all – the ground says I will catch you if you – when you – fall. The language is not hard to understand – not difficult at all –…
The poet Jane Hirshfield recently came to my attention. Imagine Mary Oliver with an edge, steel in her veins. I’m most of the way through Hirshfield’s new collection, The Asking, which draws from her work dating back to 1972 and…
His hand shook as he told the very short story of the angel who came to earth with a torch and pail. I wasn’t going to tell you this, he said, smiling, but I’ve decided to. This is what Richard…
This weekend I’m at a seminar hosted by the Center for Action and Contemplation, Richard Rohr’s spiritual think tank in Albuquerque. A stroke, a heart attack, and cancer treatments have taken their toll on Rohr. He was rolled onto stage…
“Oh, Mary!” begins at a fever pitch – loud, over the top, brassy – and stays that way. Imagine Mary Todd Lincoln as a frustrated cabaret dancer and her husband as a frustrated gay man, each part played to comic…