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
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
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
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,
7:30 in the morning about a week before leaving Vermont a month ago after 28 years. What I presumed was a snapping turtle headed across the lawn toward the dirt road in front of my house. A safe crossing could use my help I surmised. I’d assisted smaller turtles in the past by simply
“You still have things to accomplish related to why you were born, and my death will help you do them.” From the day my beloved took her life two years ago today, this message from her has illuminated every choice I make.