New Work – Full Ecology

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvaeFkgPtnc

Then there’s the tendency time has for cascading. I was pretty amazed this morning to see how long it’s been since I’ve written a blog here. I know there’s been a lot of life going on. Good stuff, bad stuff. In the former, there’s this: Gary and I have been able to put good effort into making our work together more real – accessible – more out there in the world. We’ve… Read More

Lost but never alone

We’ve just passed the winter solstice. It’s dark. Still, we all know the next stop will be spring. The path is clear, but we’re tired and the way seems very long. We also know the turn to spring will not be a solid stop. From there we’ll proceed to summer, through autumn, back to winter. All we have for sure is change. No one has been able to say the singular thing… Read More

Grief & Gratitude

    Grief is the price we pay for love. Queen Elizabeth II – Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. Melody Beattie –   This morning, a dear friend posted a photo of his 5-year-old granddaughter in honor of her birthday. Five!! Already. Earlier this month, the day passed that marked a year since the death of my friend and mentor, Roy… Read More

Truth Be Told – Montgomery

On her MoreThanTours, Michelle Browder tells the truth. She starts on the banks of the Alabama River where the lands of the Alabama Tribes were stolen, by hostility or trickery: Apache, Caddo, Alabama-Quassarte, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Arapaho, Cherokee, Cheyenne. Where black American slaves were marched from ships to storehouses to market. People descended from the Africans stolen into involuntary servitude. After 1808, when stealing people from outside our country was banned, domestic trade sustained… Read More

In a Time When Integrity Seems in Short Supply

This is Dan Wenk. He’s a dad, a husband, a grandfather, a friend, and a profoundly wise and effective public servant. Today marks the first day following his 43-year career with the National Park Service. Today – too early and in circumstances disrespectful and baffling – Dan is retired. His last post – Superintendent of Yellowstone National Park. You can read in this June 7 Washington Post piece a bit about those circumstances…. Read More

Loneliness and Listening In

Being in positive, healthy, reciprocal relationship is the most powerful predictor of mental and emotional wellbeing. Friendships, love partnerships, neighborhoods, community groups. This fact is increasingly worth considering given the evidence that loneliness in the United States is on the increase. Perhaps the most profound symptom – suicide. Last week, we learned of the suicide of a young man we know from a rural Montana town. Montana has the highest suicide rate… Read More

John McCain – “But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement”

I did not vote for John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. But because of his candidacy, I got in my car early in 2009, and began what would be a 10,000 mile circumnavigation of the lower 48. I did this because, by the time Americans got to the polls in November 2008, no matter who we voted for, everyone was using the word change. So, because of McCain and Obama, because… Read More

The Presence of Absence

Yesterday, I learned of a word. A Portuguese word. Saudade. Saudade reveals its meaning in context. Something like the English words longing, yearning, and love when it’s about a quality of ineffable missing. Like many words in other languages, there’s really not a direct translation. This is because the word holds more than its parts. A noun that’s bigger than we English speakers think nouns can be. Bigger than person, place, thing – but holding all… Read More

Keeping Calm

Here’s a paradox for you. We do better as individuals and communities if we calm down. We do better if, instead of anxious monitoring, overwork, worry, agitation and heated opposition we opt for calm. We know this but, these days, practice it too rarely. Instead, we either withdraw or lash out. Another thing about calm – it, like any other great way of being, can be trivialized. Alongside the truth of calm’s… Read More

Why Write?

I’m sitting in a coffee shop. It’s high summer in Portland. There’s the usual backdrop: coffee beans surrendering their abundance to the grinder, barista utensils clattering into motion and that burst of steam that, today, sounds most like the explosive exhale of a kid who’s held her breath as long as she can. Threading through is the canned music. The current crooner observing: “Everyone is lonely.” I’ve just looked back on my… Read More