Last week I had the great opportunity to be in Yellowstone – the first National Park in the world. Yellowstone stands out for loads of reasons – but recently I’ve learned another feature of its distinction. The park makes up over 20% of the largest generally intact ecosystem in our planet’s temperate zone. All of these are fun facts. But the realities that support them have gained particular significance to me from working alongside… Read More
So this is a photo of transition. Transition from winter to spring, from dawn to day and, as my photographer friends have taught me, this brief period when the angle of the sun rays relative to the surface of our planet is just so is also a transition they call sweet light. So here you have it. Daffodils just past dawn in sweet light on a day in my life when change is… Read More
Here on the eve of what Christians recognize as the day for celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ – here on this 24th day of what people all across the globe know, each in her or his own language, as December – here in the moments of reading these words on this page is the source of the idea — holy. In the mystery of one moment passing to the next I want… Read More
It is early morning in the middle of April. I am on a bus leaving Oxford, UK. I have kissed my daughter on the cheek more than twice. We have hugged one another many more times than that. Each embrace as if it were the actual goodbye – the one that would leave our parting fully signified and safe. All through, we smile into each other’s eyes to fill the gaps between… Read More
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
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
Today is only a day. It is Saturday, the 4th of July weekend, and like every other day it has filled with moments linking up into hours, holding people and motion – holding change. This is how it went. Sun rays angled across the morning sky. I woke with two friends on my mind – two friends who are too close to death. Tom, a remarkable and kind educational leader, is here… Read More
My friend Murry is in a protracted conversation with esophageal cancer. He knows all too well that his condition didn’t come from nowhere. The president spoke yesterday to matters in the Middle East – to the changes signified with the public uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. He spoke to Israel and Palestine– to that protracted conversation. We all know that none of that came from nowhere. Today I took a photo of… Read More
Obama released his birth certificate. Kate and William finally walked the aisle. Then the phone rings yesterday. One of my dearest of dears doesn’t know what to do. She is a hair’s breadth from ending it all. They are unmistakable when they show up, these things that are more important. Yesterday, regarding this week’s focus on the part of the news media Dan Rather said Come on, gang. Really? or something to… Read More
Donetta Brehmer was a cheerleader at Tivy High School. I think she was even Homecoming Queen one year. She was two years ahead of me, so rarified on that count alone. Donetta was pretty much the quintessence of a teen idol in the way of astronomical popularity and such. You never know who is going to be a teacher. I sat just in front of Donetta in Senora Paxton’s Spanish class. We… Read More
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