The Big Unknown has come to call. My beloved’s well-being is uncertain. Our earthly life, therefore, is uncertain beyond the usual Who the heck knows? we all deal with. Maybe around a nearby corner a measure of predictability awaits. Maybe not. She and I tell each other there is nothing we can’t handle. But
I love resentment. I didn’t always. In fact, resentment just might be the nastiest, well-entrenched elephant in my cranial vault. In Little League I once got thrown out trying to steal home, and I probably held a grudge against that blind ump until well after I had my own Little Leaguer. That’s just one example.
My friend Lewis Griggs had a near-death experience. On a rafting trip, a tree fell from the river’s edge and cracked his skull sending him into a coma for quite some time. Medical experts said there was a good chance he would die. When, instead, he returned to consciousness, he didn’t know who he was,
Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness. David Steindl-Rast The other morning when Dear went to the barn she found our horse Fletcher with his ass to the automatic waterer in his stall trying
The inspiring “March for Our Lives” protest, instigated by the nation’s high school students, prompts this reflection, beginning with a beautiful story about Archbishop Desmond Tutu. As a nine year-old child in South Africa, he was walking down a sidewalk with his mother. At that time, the nation’s apartheid customs, if not laws, dictated that
An email from an acquaintance who subscribes to my writing said she was confronting some heartbreaking transitions and would welcome any thoughts I might have. In replying, it didn’t take long to realize I was talking to maybe every one of us. Dear Q, I’m honored that you would reach out to me, and grateful
What does it take to be sober a long time? Easy. Don’t drink, don’t die. Which is to say, longevity in sobriety––29 years for me––is not necessarily much of an accomplishment. It’s not nothing. But it isn’t joy. “No recovering alcoholic dies happy because they stopped drinking,” my sponsor Pete told me way back when.
I’m sailing into the unknown. I’ve been here before. I’m probably here all the time. In some moments grace just takes a bit more work. Meeting new levels of depth in the ongoing discovery of my role in this incarnation. The thrill of anticipation coupled with the void of mystery. The death of what is