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.
Sunday Best – April 20, 2025
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 storm.
Dear ones, may we be surrounded by miracles,
big and small.
A joyful Easter to all who celebrate!
Sunday Best – April 13, 2025
“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.
They will tend to our children and elders.
Each time I hear a robo-philic proclamation, I hear my mom’s voice saying, just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
Washing the dishes, I subconsciously hum a favorite tune.
Waiting in line, I hear stories from my favorite people.
Weeding the garden, I notice the tiny creatures of the soil.
Walking to work, I witness the moon lingering in the morning sky.
Dear ones, regardless of robots,
we need not do ever more.
We could do ever better.