Category: Uncategorized

From dawn to dusk, each day last week I gave and received the greeting ¡buen camino! Along the route from Sarria to Santiago de Compostela, these words were offered from our overnight hosts, local farmers, friendly bartenders, but mostly they were exchanged with other pilgrims on the path through Galicia along the Camino Francés Sometimes…

Today’s post is partial, unresolved. An opening not a concluding. My grandmother wouldn’t be thrilled. “I don’t like abstract stories,” she once told me. Worse, this isn’t even a story. Just a preoccupation. To start concretely, I have once again marveled this week at a small wooden bowl my friend Pat made. Some years ago,…

A screechy choir of cricket-chirp pierces the low monotonous hum of air conditioner units. Somewhere in the distance – there’s a ballgame on the radio. Fast-speaking voices pitch to excitement as a player slides to second base. Meanwhile my brother tends the outdoor grill on the drive. My mother sits nearby on a wicker lounge…

“If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine, it is lethal” Paulo Coehlo This advice strikes me as half-true. ***I had a friend in college who remains the quietest person I have ever known. Her name was Elizabeth – the only fellow American in our year. Back then it was near impossible to enter an…

The homing instinct … toward a place of safety My high school theology teacher Ms. Lemieux, may she rest in peace, beamed at our often scornful, occasionally wise-cracking teen selves as we sat in uniformed rows before her. She called the assignment a Love Bombardment, which didn’t help. We were to arrive the next day…

musique – from the Greek mousikē – meaning (art) of the Muses In July 2020, a tentative lifting of strict COVID restrictions meant I could escape isolation and enjoy a long drive to a mostly, but not entirely, abandoned office. For most of that year and well into the next, a string of small blessings…

Before you let anything into your life, you have to let something go.

We are not designed to sit and concentrate

You become what you give your attention to.