Trade your cleverness for wonder. – Rumi After a week of spreadsheets and earnings releases and Bloomberg alerts, it’s easy to get trapped in calculating mental loops, each more strategic and sophisticated than the last. Sometimes it’s a slippery slope from strategic to cynical. Fortunately we are surrounded by antidotes. A single […]
Pope Francis passed on Easter Monday, and I’ve been revisiting his writing in the days since. I was fortunate to hear him speak at the TED conference back in 2017, and this passage stood out even more vividly now than it did then. The future does have a name, and its name is Hope. […]
When times are tough, I take shelter inside my own mind. If I’m lucky, I can think my way through to the other side of the challenge. If it’s really thorny, at least I can keep company with my own thoughts until the storm passes. But every once in a while, I’m reminded of […]
Sometimes the momentous times are truly grand. Lightning strikes, waves crash, the ground shakes beneath our feet. We are transformed, and we know it instantly. But sometimes, our morning coffee just tastes extra good. A band is playing in the park. A loved one greets us at the airport. A rainbow appears after a […]
“The routine can be the ticket to the transcendent.” – Andy Laats The Age of Robots is before us, each prediction bolder than the last. Robots will build all of our stuff. They will farm all of our land. They will protect us from enemies. They will bring minerals from space to earth. […]
Every good New Englander knows, when you start to slide – whether ice or mud or slippery rock – the key to survival is to ease up, regain your footing, and then proceed with caution, maybe by another route. Oh, but it’s hard, when every fiber of your being is saying, squeeze tighter! Turn sharply! […]
In these Alice in Wonderland times, I have been trying to listen more to those whose life ways are tuned beyond a single news cycle. This has me turning often to the wisdom of Wendell Berry. Dear friends, may we love someone who does not deserve it. May we plant sequoias. May we hear the […]
When things are heavy, I tend to walk and walk and walk. Eventually, instead of being lost in thought, I am lost in feeling. On lucky days, I get a little glimmer of knowing. And once in a blue moon, to bring the point home, there’s an added spark, like the two angel wing […]
I was zipping down the road a few days back when the person in front of me came to an inexplicable stop, far from any signs or lights. Once I slowed myself, I saw a whole gaggle of geese crossing the road. They took their sweet time, too – padding backwards and forwards and ‘round […]
Friends, it was a windy week, literally and figuratively, and this poem by E.E. Cummings helped me to catch my breath. May we dive for dreams. May we trust our hearts. dive for dreams or a slogan may topple you (trees are their roots and wind is wind) trust your heart if the […]