“Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot … Be water, my friend.” […]
All posts filed under: mindfulness
A Single Glorious Thing
“In my own worst seasons, I’ve come back from the colorless world of despair by forcing myself to look hard, for a long time, at a single glorious thing: a flame of red geranium outside my bedroom window.” – Barbara Kingsolver, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, essayist […]
Little Guy Integrity
As it happened, Casper the box bed company was running a limited time sale the weekend we found out our friends, Christine and Sam, would be visiting at the end of October. The sale was great timing because of the two twins we have in […]
House: A Framework for Holding it Together
The framework I describe here is a process for remaining intact amidst all that comes at us over the course of a day, a week, a month, a lifetime. Every morning, we wake up and set about our day. In the hours to come we […]
Little Luxuries
When you think of luxury, what does that word bring to mind for you? It instantly gets me thinking about 2,000 thread count sheets and a mattress that feels like sleeping on a cloud. The time and ease of mind to luxuriate in them. Food […]
Making Room for the Unwanted
Some new neighbors moved into the neighborhood a few weeks ago. They are loud. They disturb the peace. They set off firecrackers. Illegally. I regarded this as a big problem. I wanted the old neighbors back, the formerly invisible ones. These new ones need to […]
Cat or Dog?
Growing up, we were a cat family. This didn’t work out well for my younger brother, John, who was a dog person through and through. He solved the problem by simply pretending Winklemeyer was a dog. He never once let up on the claim. Much […]
Coming Back to Our Senses
Being able to navigate the overwhelming nature of distress is complicated by the way it focuses our attention right down to a pinpoint, confining us to a very small parcel of real estate in our mind. In this reduced space our entire field of vision […]
What We Think We See
From a half a block away, I saw them gesturing back and forth to each other, she posed in front of Stephen King’s house, he with a camera in his hand. Something wasn’t sitting well. As I got closer, I heard raised voices. Was this […]
Recognizing Lovely
We all want to feel alive and feel the vitality of life coursing through us but lately my hands have made me aware of the very opposite, aware of vitality slipping away. Lately, these hands have become a big problem in my life. I’ve got […]
The Theology of Thank You
During a leadership team meeting at an earlier time in my life, we’d been asked to go around the table and offer observations about where each of our colleagues could improve. It felt like a set-up of some sort so consequently I felt myself becoming […]
Getting Schooled
Putting the house to order before work, I pick up the packaging tape dispenser left on the dining room table and notice the tape has slipped out from the slot it threads through. Oh yeah. That’s why I didn’t put it away. It happens all […]
Be cool. 