Posts

How Can I Keep from Singing?

Almost home from our daily walk, just as we were walking past, we saw a neighbor we didn’t know come out of her front door, sit down on a chair on her cluttered porch, and sing. Loudly. As if in

Talk to the Hand

Yesterday on a walk, I passed an elderly white person, warmly dressed, waiting in a bus shelter in Porter Square. (And by “elderly” I mean the same age as me!) A second look and, yes, although considerably aged from

Cover Your Mouth!

More than forty years ago, when my oldest daughter was in elementary school, we’d lived in Wethersfield, Connecticut’s historic district, its Main Street lined with carefully-restored eighteen-century homes interspersed with newer yet still elegant dutch-colonials and Victorians. (We’d lived in

What I’m Taking On For Lent

I’m not giving up anything this year; I’m taking on something. Something I’ve been afraid to take on for most of my life: I’m welcoming everything that happens to me. For, as Francis Weller points out, “This is the secret

Butter-knifing

Here I am, once again, “circling Fort Knox with a butter knife trying to figure out how to get in.”* I know I want to write about loss, about sorrow, and about how, for most of my life, I’ve let

It’s Complicated

Back in the day when I taught homeless women in greater Boston shelters, one of my students, young and lovely, suddenly looked up from whatever she was working on* to say, “You know something? It’s not that we don’t know

Fallow

When I was working on WellingUp.net, I told its web developers: “You know? This is probably my last book.” “Nah,” Byron Hinebaugh replied. “You’re just getting started.” Turns out Byron was right. Turns out I just finished a new one

Do I Matter?

This week I heard a story, a story I’d heard before, told by a friend held in solitary confinement. His tiny cell’s overhead light broken, for months he literally lived in darkness; only a beam of light the size of

The Marmee Dilemma

Much is being written or vlogged about Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women.” May I join in? Seated in perfect seats in the Somerville Theater on a rainy Saturday afternoon, a beloved, grown daughter by my side, I was already prepared to

Muscle Memory

One Sunday morning every December, my Quaker meeting shortens its morning worship to put on a fifteen-minute Christmas pageant. Directed and performed by the children of our community, some First Day School students chose speaking parts, others opt to

Two Toucans Touching

Sometimes I exchange books with a dear friend. Sometimes I’ll notice intriguing titles or descriptives in a box of give-aways on the sidewalk and grab a book or two. Sometimes my grandchildren tell me I should read the YA they’ve

The Big Picture (Or As Much of It That’s Currently Available)

What I’m about to write may seem ridiculously obvious. And political—not spiritual. And yet this Ah Hah feels Spirit-given: Yesterday at a meeting on immigration justice, we were bemoaning the current administration’s latest attack: drastically raising the fees to apply

Just The Facts, Folks

In order to be very, very careful, I must leave out most of the salient details that would make this post come alive. Pop. For the safety of the person I want to write about, I’m leaving out most of

Out Of My Comfort Zone

One of the many reasons my husband and I subscribe to ASP has been that their (brilliant and well-acted) productions are staged in under-used spaces throughout greater Boston. We shlep. We explore. We have pre-play meals in parts of town

Apples and Oranges

We talk about “speaking truth to power”; sometimes using just the right words, even if they’re highfalutin’, can be enormously clarifying. Like “false equivalency.” I am loving how, with greater and greater frequency, the media is calling out out the

Yes, Ma’am

Take it from me, someone who’d stumbled around post-cataract surgery until I got my new glasses, I am now exquisitely aware of how we’re inundated with written stuff! It’s everywhere. It’s a given. (And when you can’t actually read it, it’s

“Radical Acceptance”

I have a new mantra these days. And it’s powerful. And eerily, mysteriously effective. Here’s an example of how it plays out: This morning I read yet another news article about some egregiously, blatantly horrible thing Trump has done, and,

Time-Sensitive

A coal barge slowly cruises up the Ohio River; it passes the Jeffboat Company, now shut down, where the rust-colored barge that coal’s resting on had probably been built. And I, sitting at a cafe across the river sipping an

Freshly Brilliant

There have been many times over the past month as I either prepared for or recovered from both eyes’ cataract surgery, when I simply sat. Sunblocked, broad-brim hatted, adequately hydrated, I just sat. Earlier in the month I silently mourned

Somewhere With No Service

It’s been almost three weeks since I last heard from the friend I used to visit in prison, recently deported back to trouble-torn Dominican Republic. “They’ll kill you for a pair of $25 sneakers over here,” he told me a

Patterns, Examples

Forty years ago and just beginning to attend Friends Meeting at Cambridge, I’d considered the people I’d worshipped with every Sunday far, far superior to me. Until I didn’t. Over the years, although my fellow Friends have proved themselves to

Just Imagine!

Saturday, at Art Beat, Somerville’s largest cultural festival, I experienced A Moment: The nearby band playing Elvis Costello’s “(What So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding,” an immigrant grandfather, his three grandchildren, and their parents decorated butterfly* pins, the adults

“Why me? Why us? Why Now?”

There is an us in this famous Marshall Ganz statement. I keep forgetting that. Called to follow Micah’s admonition to do justly, love mercy, walk humbly, I keep forgetting that a huge part of my particular version of humbly is to remember that

“Nobody’s Free Until Everybody’s Free”*

Tuesday, having spent some wonderful time with our Tarrytown, NY family, my husband and I explored that part of the world a little on our own. Driving north, the broad, magnificent Hudson to our left, we’d gotten off Route 9