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 […]
Breaking it Off With a Toxic Friend
The worst part about life under the dominion of a toxic friend is the way that person manages to move in and take over your mind and body. A co-worker caught in that toxic dynamic started having chest pains so severe she had to go […]
How Safe is Raw Honey?
While the idea of honey straight from the hive and milk straight from the cow has great appeal, I’ve always been way too leery of microbes to mess with that. Pasteurization all the way for me. But it turns out honey doesn’t need to be […]
The Long Walk Home. Stories From the Road
I was still a few miles from home when out of the blue and for no predictable reason I hit the wall. My energy was instantly gone like someone had siphoned all the gas out of my tank while I was looking the other way. […]
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 […]
Thin Places
I’d been trying to write a story about a close friend who had died, reaching for something beyond my grasp with only puny words to get me there. What I was trying to capture was the way the first annual camping trip to Baxter without […]
Everywhere
“Hey, there’s a sunset,” Gail says. No one was expecting this. We’d spent the last few hours of the afternoon with rain dropping pleasantly on the screen house tent, water spattering our arms through the netting. When it came time to cook dinner we’d all […]
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 […]
Riding the Horse
Are you the person you were a year ago? Did you mean to be different? It’s actually strange to think of who we were one year ago and in what ways we may or may not have changed, either by happenstance or by design. I […]
Precisely because…
I had this week’s post all planned out. It was going to address the dread uninvited guest who shows up at the holiday party, hangs around too long at the buffet table then follows you home. You know who I’m talking about… Food Poisoning. Given […]
Glimmering through the day
That phrase, “Just getting through the day,” has always seemed like a lousy way to live, and yet that’s often my sense of how it’s done, how we talk about it, how I do it, using little stepping-stones of pleasure to keep me moving along. […]
Be cool. 