I recently reconnected with the work of Liliana Porter, an artist who I first noticed years ago at an auction for the terrific MassArt. In a recent interview, she shows off a toy monkey with cymbals, the kind that can drive you nuts in under 30 seconds. I was puzzled by Liliana’s obvious affection for […]
After 24 hours of watching still more snow fall, even my hibernation-loving self needed to get outside. I tramped around the field in my snowshoes, sinking deep with every step. I trimmed some forsythia to bring inside. I stood on top of one of the snow plow mounds to admire the view from waaaay up […]
Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world. – Shelley I’ve been experimenting with some new habits and rituals lately, and the one that has had the most immediate “return on time” is deceptively simple. Instead of starting the morning by scrolling email or headlines before my feet even hit […]
It’s been a couple weeks now since the big eastern US snowstorm, but I’d swear that each original flake is still here, plus lots of their friends. Every outing is a tiny adventure. The other day as I tromped home from the grocery store with my overflowing bags, I hit a patch of ice and […]
Happy St. Brigid’s Day! As we arc towards the springtime, current temperatures be darned, I’ve confirmed plans to spend more time outdoors this year. This intention, plus the headlines on any given day, have me returning yet again to the Wendell Berry poem below. I cannot count the number of times I have taken shelter […]
I was driving behind a car the other day covered in bumper stickers declaring our world to be a Matrix-like fiction. And indeed, depending on the news of the day, this is sometimes an appealing proposition. To me a more fruitful exercise is to look around and ask “what if?” Usually I ask this in […]
In the heart of winter in New England, it’s easy to fall into a habit of time traveling. I can spend hours in seed catalogs, or online travel planning, or lost in my own far-flung thoughts – anything to skip over the grey, cold here and now. This season I’m aiming to skip ahead a […]
What we call the beginning is often the endAnd to make an end is to make a beginning.The end is where we start from. – T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding When I first read these lines from Eliot, they seemed so familiar… then I realized it’s because of the late-90’s […]
Happy new year, dear friends! Today I am re-posting an updated version of a Honeybee classic – the new year’s flip. Wishing you all a joyful, thriving year to come. Like many people, my new year reflections used to be full of “should’ves”. I would reflect on prior resolutions, and end up focusing solely […]
Dear friends, as we near the end of the year, the concept of liminality is on my mind. I’m reposting a streamlined & revised version of a reflection from 2020 here, as it is echoing for me now. One of my favorite words from divinity school is “liminality” – it’s a description of the […]