Sunday Best – May 25, 2025
I returned bleary from a red eye flight straight into the arms of dozens of college friends at our school reunion this weekend. No matter how many times I visit campus in-between big events, there is something alchemical about being in the same place with the same cohort of people who knew one another so deeply at 18, when we were all just beginning to become.
When these ingredients combine, I feel that I am visiting with the most essential aspects of my own self – the parts that are hard to see sometimes, what with the rest of life all layered up on top.
Dear ones, may we greet ourselves arriving at our own doors.
May we love again the stranger who was ourself.
May we feast on our lives.
Love After Love, Derek Walcott
The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,
the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.
Sunday Best – May 18, 2025
A friend sent me this passage from Cormac McCarthy this week, and I’m delighted to share this gift with you.
Dear ones, may we seek the thread of order.
May we dictate the terms of our own fate.
The man who believes that the secrets of the world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.
Sunday Best – May 11, 2025
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 evening listening to actual humans make music leaves us lighter, connected. A single hour with a painting leaves us open, curious. A single minute with an unfurling fern leaves us hopeful, awestruck.
Dear ones, as my biomimicry teachers urge, let us quiet our cleverness.
Let us seek the wisdom of wonder.
Let us fill ourselves with earnest delight.
On this day especially, one possible source of wonder is to reflect on all who have nurtured us. Mother’s Day is complicated and painful for many, and at the same time we have all been mothered – by family and friends and teachers and communities and forests and lakes and pets and books and songs and selves. I am one of the very lucky ones who has been supported by all of the above – and most of all, luckiest of all, by my own dear mom, with the most steadfast love I will ever know. If you have ever cared for a person or place or idea with even a tiny fraction of this kind of devotion, thank you. You have made our world a better place.
* Photo from the mesmerizing Dakota Mace exhibit at SITE Santa Fe.
Sunday Best – May 4, 2025
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.
Feeling hopeful does not mean to be optimistically naïve
and ignore the tragedy humanity is facing.
Hope is the virtue of a heart
that doesn’t lock itself into darkness,
that doesn’t dwell on the past,
does not simply get by in the present,
but is able to see a tomorrow.
Hope is the door that opens onto the future.
Hope is a humble, hidden seed of life
that, with time, will develop into a large tree.
It is like some invisible yeast that allows the whole dough to grow,
that brings flavor to all aspects of life.
And it can do so much,
because a tiny flicker of light that feeds on hope
is enough to shatter the shield of darkness.
A single individual is enough for hope to exist,
and that individual can be you.
Dear ones, may we nurture the humble seed of life.
May we fan the flames of a tiny flicker of light.
May we open the door onto the future.
May we hope.
Sunday Best – April 27, 2025
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 my own being-ness. A small bout of the flu this past week brought me right into the full reality of being a human creature, vulnerable and fragile and totally laid low my the most microscopic of adversaries.
Humbling.
Humanizing.
Dear ones, may we all find comfort when we need it, whether within ourselves or with loved ones or in connection with the wide world around us. Or sometimes from CVS.
May we revel in our full humanity,
mind, body, and spirit.