Sunday Best – April 30, 2023
That it will never come again
Is what makes life so sweet.
– Emily Dickinson
Like a lot of folks, I’ve spent some time lately experimenting with new AI tools and pondering all of the possibilities, the perilous and the profound.
One application with a real squirm factor is whether AI tools can – or should – help with emotional human tasks, like writing love letters. Sure, it is great to have some coaching when the right words just won’t come, but that is kind of the point – that some things are worth the struggle.
In this era of faster, easier, cheaper, what is – still – worthy of our effort?
Love is laborious.
Empathy is expensive.
Worth every minute.
Worth every penny.
Sunday Best – April 23, 2023
My work includes a focus on climate solutions, which means I’m sometimes immersed in technocratic debates that seem removed from the world we actually inhabit. Other conversations center entirely on risks and suffering, offering loop-de-loops of endless anxiety.
Regardless of professional setting, these two extremes are familiar to most of us these days.
All brain can be numbing and detached.
All heart can be painful and paralyzing.
Thank goodness for artists, who can help us bridge between head and heart.
Here’s to the art of love and agency.
Here’s to the art of witness and grace.
Here’s to the art of thinking and feeling.
Here’s to the art that restores our souls.
This week I was delighted to learn more about the work of Liana Finck, who can distill the broadest angst or the deepest joy into a single image. Liana’s work includes an amazing book where she imagines the all-powerful God of Genesis as a somewhat awkward and self-questioning woman.
Website with links to Liana’s newsletter info, social media, and Patreon support:: Liana Finck
Sunday Best – April 16, 2023
“Love falls to earth, rises from the ground, pools around the afflicted. Love pulls people back to their feet. Bodies and souls are fed. Bones and lives heal. New blades of grass grow from charred soil. The sun rises.” – Anne Lamott, Help. Thanks. Wow.
Saturday morning, on a layover halfway to my destination, it suddenly dawned on me that I’d forgotten my passport. Never in my life have I forgotten an important travel document, and indeed I have reserved a special sort of smug judgment for those who do.
My first thought was to fly thousands of miles home, and then thousands of miles back, thus ensuring I would arrive at least a full day behind schedule. Thankfully my sister was with me, and upon hearing my plan, she gently asked, you have friends, right?
Heroes jumped to the rescue! Dear friends interrupted their weekend to fetch the passport and send it on its way, and a terrifically reliable courier delivered it safely to my wonderful brother in law several states away, who happens to be arriving at this stopover point just as I depart. A miraculous web of helpfulness!
Dear ones, I expect that some of you, like me, have an independence that runs well past the admirable and into the ridiculous. May we all have the chance to practice this simple little prayer.
Help.
And when we do,
may angels and heroes rush to our aid.
Sunday Best – April 9, 2023
How fortunate I am to be part of the Bioneers community, a group that is unafraid to grieve, unafraid to celebrate, unafraid to dream, unafraid to work towards what might be possible.
What’s possible is not static.
What’s possible is ever changing.
Some pathways grow thorny, while others suddenly clear.
Dear ones, it’s time to dust off old dreams,
time to dream new ones, too.
What’s possible now,
That wasn’t before?
What is ready to be?
Finally.
Again.
Anew.
Inspired by the Eyes on Iran project, and the people, purpose, and action it honors.
https://www.womanlifefreedom.today/eyes-on-iran/
Sunday Best – April 2, 2023
Crocus in bloom, Sox back at Fenway, mittens packed away.
Dear friends, Spring is on her way to New England,
and not a moment too soon.
Before a Departure in Spring
– W.S. Merwin
Once more it is April with the first light sifting
through the young leaves heavy with dew making the colors
remember who they are the new pink of the cinnamon tree
the gilded lichens of the bamboo the shadowed bronze
of the kamani and the blue day opening
as the sunlight descends through it all like the return
of a spirit touching without touch and unable
to believe it is here and here again and awake
reaching out in silence into the cool breath
of the garden just risen from darkness and days of rain
it is only a moment the birds fly through it calling
to each other and are gone with their few notes and the flash
of their flight that had vanished before ever we knew it
we watch without touching any of it and we
can tell ourselves only that this is April this is the morning
this never happened before and we both remember it