Awareness is Tattooed and Riding a Harley

In a week of exceptions — a meteorite crashing through an otherwise ordinary Russian sky, a Pope resigning for the first time in 600 years – an unlikely story of a racist street fighter turned modest-but-powerful spiritual teacher beloved by people of all walks of life seems right in line. For context, I’ll tell you about this picture.  This is the sunrise earlier this month over a mountain in southern India.  Surrounding… Read More

Thirteen Ways We’re Not Helpless – Notes from the Edge of the Cliff

There are a lot of things that could be said about right now, today, December 31, 2012. For starters, we in the Northern Hemisphere are in the darkest time of year.  In Portland, Oregon the days are short, and most often gray and wet.  Nonetheless, we, like all of us, are in a great series of collectively signified moments that invite suspension of despair and the joyful tending of possibility. On December… Read More

What do we learn? What do we teach? The days after Sandy Hook

Love that takes us out of ourselves and binds us to something larger.  President Obama Newtown, CT 12-16-2012 The days move by in this the darkest season for the Northern Hemisphere.  Saturday was the day after, Sunday two days after, Monday three, Tuesday four ….  These days will pass into months and years, and those of us still drawing breath in these wild and precious lives will continue.  As we do, we… Read More

Where are the White People?

Sometimes I turn to internet sources for news updates.  Huffington Post, NYT, stories posted to facebook, local papers’ websites for learning about where I am along the road.  Often there are stories with photos of crowd scenes.  Some are international, but I’m thinking today of domestic stories – Occupy, Tea Party, vigils, protests on the National Mall or at statehouses across the country.  In the case of crowd photos from the U.S.,… Read More

Under the Hoodie

No, Geraldo.  It’s not the clothing. It’s about looking under the hoodie. mc By now, most Americans are aware of the death of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old young man who was visiting his father’s home in a gated community of Sanford, Florida.  Trayvon lost his life to a single gunshot fired by a man who lived in the same community.  At the time the fatal shot fired, it was dark.  Trayvon, who… Read More

Better Than You Believe

Better than you believe; stronger than you seem. Carol Ackerman “What we know is that the more people affiliate with other people, the more their sources of positive experiences and possibilities for energizing and purposeful activity in the world.” This is my best shot at something my mentor, Jane Conoley said to me yesterday morning.  We were sitting in her living room, the Sunday morning light breathing itself across the bamboo floors,… Read More

What am I Doing Here? OCCUPYING CHANGE.

Here we are.  In crisis.  Together. The truth of the oft cited Chinese logograph for crisis is that it holds two characters, one connoting danger and the other signifying a point of uncertainty, a critical moment, a point of profound and unsettling change.  This is vastly more realistic than the more New Age rendition that misattributes the notion of opportunity to the second character. We are in crisis.  These years are more… Read More

A Squirrel Story

Wednesday morning, October 5, I was filling time before my mom arrived at the Portland airport.  She was on a nonstop from ATL that had left at 3 a.m. Pacific Time.  She turned 77 in September.  That’s a long way on little sleep.  She’s my hero! The real truth of the matter is, I had been a bit uber–intense (who me?) with getting the house clean and adorable enough for my mom… Read More

The Streets of London and a Bridge in Portland, OR

There are weeks when I think, “I have no idea what to write in this week’s blog.”  Really.  Lots of them.  Then, without fail, events turn.  They may be close in like with bus rides, or widespread like weather, or painful like the death of a dear one.  They can also seem to have nothing to do with one another, and then, out of the nowhere of random neuron firings, I see… Read More

J. Murry Owen 1955-2011

There are threads that run through a life.  There’s the vague story of birth – the shifting shadows and bright spots childhood – the teen years, every one of them – and what came next and next and next.  There are memories of scent and touch and sound.  Images of faces and bedrooms and meals and travels.  And there’s the land where you were raised. Today the ashes remaining from the 56-year-old… Read More