Shortly after our daughter Kathryn died last month, from the end of my drawing pen appeared this image of her. Big mind, heart body, new left foot. Nearly 50 years ago, the leg that foot was part of was amputated.
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An email from a friend of our daughter Kathryn is among the most treasured I will ever receive. Her friend spoke of text messages he and Kath exchanged a week or so before her recent death. Specifically, from her, this: Just loving moment to moment. I’m fully in my Zen evolution, letting go of
Leaving the World Singing Read More »
Our daughter Kathryn, 57, is an excellent role model for many people in many different ways. She is an easy person to admire. She enjoys an array of notable worldly accomplishments, a vast breadth of knowledge she generously shares, is kind-hearted, a first-rate problem solver, and has a highly functioning funnybone. But none of that
Admirable Daughter Read More »
When I die I want to simply disappear into the ether. Having arrived an alien to all but God nearly 80 years ago, slipping out the back, my adios no more than whatever mess or beauty I’ve created while here, is in keeping with how I’ve attempted to honor the parade of treasures bestowed upon
Here’s a question that can teach us a lot about ourselves. If you could think just one thought for the rest of your life, what thought would you choose? I’m immediately reminded of a story I heard somewhere about a cloister in which the monks kept complete silence except when they met one another in
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Dedicated to the three sons of my friend Scott Every once in a while I sob uncontrollably. Not from sadness, but from feeling the pain of human suffering throughout the world while also feeling the many ways I have been blessed with teachers and experiences that help me navigate that suffering—sometimes even gracefully. Just
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This is my contribution to our collective turn of mind and heart as we note the the significance of 9/11 twenty years later. In January 2001, I finally obeyed the call of my heart to re-order my priorities. Among the new adventures to follow are today more than seventeen hundred drawings, dozens of stone
Barely touched down in Santa Fe after 28 years in Vermont, the phone in my heart rings. My beloved. Time to rest her ashes on sacred ground overlooking the Pacific––an agreement we made long before she considered ending her life two years ago. I’m on it, I say. Though I wonder: Why now,
Loving the Wound of Emptiness Read More »