Toni Morrison  18 February, 1931-5 August, 2019 We die. That may be the meaning of life.  But we do language. That may be the measure of our lives.  —Toni Morrison— Thank you for your language.  The measure you shared is an everlasting gift. There is another star added to the galaxy, or perhaps even more…

There is a sound…a sound that opens my being and inhabits my bones for a while…and when that sound…meets a mood…and that mood meets a way to write…the lines fall out a certain way…like a picture of what I feel.   “Nina Simone” by Stanley Chow Tea with Nina Simone Singer woman with a lived-in…

A couple from Ireland stopped in front of where I was seated on a bench, having lunch in the shade at the Public Gardens. “That looks absolutely amazing…,” they said to me of my meal. I looked up at them. “Honestly, it is…Every single thing about it is divine. The juice, the colour, the taste,…

I Carry Vacation with Me My brain needs space to rest and roam; my heart needs room to feel.  A book in hand is a key to a place where ‘away’ becomes the real. Wizards, mansions, and moors and trains; detectives, urchins and spies, this and that and now and then and here and there,…

Over the years, I keep returning to two quotations… One by Walt Whitman–Do I contradict myself?  Very well then, I contradict myself.  I am large and I contain multitudes.  And this one by Frederick Buechner.  Both speak of letting fullness dwell within; of letting what is most real dwell within.  And that living with fullness,…

19 June, 2019…In the heady coffee-cinnamon humidity of No. 9 Coffeeshop. Paul Simon overhead. Your colours were a brief and glorious glimpse of flair this morning. The peach gradient on the horizon, rather spectacular. And the clouds and trees upon the water—as though they needed a reflection to adjust night flattened branches or to fresh fluff…

Several mornings of my recent retreat were spent on a wharf in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. I was drawn there for the spacious quiet, for the water, the horizon, the creak of the pilings and cries of the birds, and, honestly, the comfortable chairs close enough to the edge to prop up my short legs and…

Here in Halifax, and elsewhere, it has been a grey stretch of time, these last months. Grey and rain; grey and fog; grey and something between rain and fog; Grey. Yet still the Public Gardens green and bloom in technicolor because that is what trees, flowers, and plants are called to do. And in fact,…

     The role of repetition in prayer is long standing across different traditions.  Sometimes it is a repetitive action or movement, sometimes it is linguistic. Mantras, rosaries, sets of yoga poses…all assist both in focusing and in letting go… The act of repetitive behavior itself has a role in that way. Any prayer that…

What was intended as a quick errand to drop mail into the postbox turned into a lovely thick amble down the main shopping street near here and then up a side street to Citadel Hill; and along there until reaching the northeast corner entrance to the Public Gardens. I turned in and, as happens sometimes,…