Reflections

  Those of you who have seen me and asked about my vacation in Kauai have heard me talk primarily about one thing: Sea Turtles.  Snorkeling with those ancient and slow creatures was a highlight for me and turtles keep showing up in my imagination as a guide for me in these summer days.  Last Friday I went to my dream group wearing a glass turtle necklace I had purchased while away.  I ran into the two other members of our group outside and one was wearing a turtle necklace and the other had on a turtle earring.  It felt like synchronicity indeed. 

God, help me to think of my small, formless, imperfect soul as constantly subject to your loving, creative action, here and now, in all the bustle of my daily life, its ups and downs, its anxieties and tensions and its dreary, unspiritual stretches—and gradually giving it, through these things, its ordained form and significance. So that in all the events of my life, even the most trivial, I experience your pressure, Creative Artist. -Evelyn Underhill, Meditations and Prayers Can you imagine God as a great Creative Artist?  What would it mean to live with an awareness of God’s creative power

No matter what your work, let it be your own. No matter what your occupation, let what you are doing be organic. Let it be in your bones. In this way, you will open the door by which the affluence of heaven and earth shall stream into you. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson If you are here unfaithfully with us, you’re causing terrible damage. If you’ve opened your loving to God’s love, you’re helping people you don’t know and have never seen. Is what I say true? Say yes quickly, if you know, if you’ve known it from before the beginning

These last few weeks certain themes have been on my mind in connection with creativity: radical self-care, dream-tending, contemplative living, and humility.  My body continues to feel tired and my intuition and dreams have been screaming at me to not make the trip down to Berkeley to teach later this month.  And so early this week, with the advice of my doctor and the support of a wonderful husband and great friends, I made the difficult decision to not go.  Thankfully, my good friend and colleague Amy Wyatt has agreed to step in and take my place which helps relieve my

Monday night my husband and I watched the documentary “Why We Fight” which opens with Eisenhower’s farewell speech warning the American people of not becoming beholden to the “military industrial complex.”  Much of the film is about situating our current national obsessions with war in historical and economic context.  Essentially, the war machine is profitable, so it will keep being fed.  It was one of those films that fueled my anger at this war we are engaged in because of its compelling and precise arguments. Then all day yesterday I was in a bit of a funk, in part because

“I regard monks and poets as the best degenerates in America. Both have a finely developed sense of the sacred potential in all things; both value image and symbol over utilitarian purpose or the bottom line; they recognize the transformative power hiding in the simplest things, and it leads them to commit absurd acts: the poem! the prayer! what nonsense! In a culture that excels at creating artificial, tightly controlled environments (shopping malls, amusement parks, chain motels), the art of monks and poets is useless, if not irresponsible, remaining out of reach of commercial manipulation and ideological justification.”  –Kathleen Norris,