Certain moments are shot through with veins of peace and well-being. One such moment, while caring for friends’ young children, occurred several years ago. I knew these kid well; we saw each other weekly. One was 3 and a half. The other was not yet a year and a half. Imagine spirited kids, and an… Continue reading

Lately when I meet someone new, or see someone I haven’t seen in a while, I see entire stories written on their faces. Not every person, not every time — but enough times to make a pattern. Last night a woman told me of her daughter’s engagement. Waves of joy were rippling from her head… Continue reading

This week I’ve been dreaming each night of my mother. She is teaching my sister and me things. How to fly. How to heal others. Who knows what tonight’s lesson will be? There is a picture hanging in my grandmother’s house of my grandmother, my mother, and me. I might be 4. My mother is… Continue reading

What is healing? Lately, to me, it means bringing stillness, to myself and to others, in the way I might carry water. Bring refreshment. Bring balm. Bring respite. Bring rest. Healing also, lately, for me, means bringing my own stillness  to bear on the static of someone else’s life, their stuck-ness, their lack of pattern, their… Continue reading

The message I hear most often as I move through crowds of people, everyone weaving, to and fro? All is well. There is a sense of everything folding together. Patterns are integrated. There is a Whole, and everyone belongs. There is the same sense in Nature, though the patterns are more obvious, and the tone… Continue reading

I woke up this morning with the hymn running through my mind: “Gonna lay down my sword and shield / down by the waterside. / Ain’t gonna study war no more.” I am on my way to stay at William Penn House in Washington, DC, and the story is recalled to me, how George Fox… Continue reading

What makes a community? In part, naming each other as members. I used to enjoy watching the 1980s sitcom “Cheers,” but more than the show itself, I liked the theme song. “You want to be where you can see / Our troubles are all the same. / You want to go where everybody knows your… Continue reading

A Friend once told me, “God’s love is poured out for absolutely everyone.” Often human and divine love are impossible to separate, and perhaps that’s as it should be. A few recent “tells” when one gave window to the layer beneath: I walked into Durham Friends Meeting a week ago after an absence of years, on… Continue reading

Tonight as I walked home from work by a different route than usual, I knelt to retie a bootlace. My thoughts were on the fact this was a more gritty part of the neighborhood than I’d usually choose when tired and not so alert. Relaced, I stood up directly into the waiting gaze of a passing child.… Continue reading

A month of making the tour of medical caregivers and responding to my body’s demands for attention and rest, has set me reflecting on why it is that resting feels so hard to come by. Why does it seem to cut against the grain? My mother’s grandmother used to recite a poem: “Good, better, best… Continue reading