As I thought about this post…which I have been looking forward to for some weeks now…many trite phrases came to mind. Beginning with the most youthful, there’s Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. The most foreboding, in my opinion, You can never go home again. One of the most stitched, Home, sweet home. And then the…

Easter, 2013   Let the Easter I proclaim be the simple extraordinary time and again and ultimate resurrection of hope.   Hope in you, who gave everything; Hope in you, who calls me to do likewise; Hope in you, love beyond reason and measure.   Let me live with this singing within and steadying me,…

From William Joyce’s The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore There are large photo pools on various sites that follow the theme What’s in your bag? Owners dump and arrange the contents of their daily bag, photograph it, tag it, and post it to the curious enjoyment of thousands. What I find myself wondering…

Every aspect of the orange I just tenderly consumed was an ideal, a citric aspiration to greatness. Tissue thin membranes separating the sections; a sweetness rivaled by the heady lilacs growing in the Arboretum at UW-Madison where I would ride my bike simply for the joy of inhaling; tight skin hugging the jeweled interior; and…

Still life, Checked Tablecloth, Henri Matisse My day began with a scant but roomy three line poem for breakfast… Eating a Morning Poem French bread toast with a smear of lemon curd, a mandarin, and a cup of tea.   It was simple, clean, fresh, pleasing, bright…all I could ideally ask of a breakfast… I…

Atacama desert, Chile I don’t often think “Road Trip” when I think of Lent, but this year as these 40 days get underway, I am tingling with an urge to simply GO. Not that I have a destination or even a particularly conscious reason, but there is a part of me just ready to shoulder…

Ash Wednesday, 2013   Mark me as one inclined toward life, toward love and its deeper knowing.   Mark me as one inclined toward love, toward the company of compassion.   Mark me as one inclined toward compassion, toward the yes that flames boldly.   Mark me as one inclined toward yes, toward the difficult…

Four times last week alone I had people ask me–What do you write in that notebook? The question should not surprise me…many have asked me that over the years (decades) that I have carried at least one notebook and a number of pens in whatever bag I have slung across my body or in the pockets of whatever…

Picasso’s And so I take my final sips amidst the papers, pen, and books strewn about my thinking space, amidst the groupings of fours and sixes laughing within the steamed windows of this warm spiced haven where the company one keeps matters, where the feelings that arise are born of the deeper joys, the lasting…