Do I contradict myself?Very well then I contradict myself,(I am large, I contain multitudes.) - Walt Whitman, Song of Myself I do like it when things appear fairly straight-forward. Knowing who I am, where I stand, solid in my position…
“One sees great things from the valley; only small things from the peak.” - G.K. Chesterton Oh, it’s delicious to reach a high point. Everybody loves a mountaintop experience. Up there full of satisfaction. Completing the climb, maybe the accomplishment…
A few months ago Travis and I binge-watched several seasons of Cheers, the 1980s NBC sitcom. It’s a great ensemble and the show is still really funny 40 years later. One of the side effects of watching it, however, was…
We humans have evolved to recognize patterns. We’re really good at it. So good, in fact, that we see pictures and create significance even out of nebulous shapes and apparent randomness. We perceive meaningful images in clouds and land forms,…
For our cats, every night includes THE MOST IMPORTANT five minutes in the history of the universe. They get dinner just before Travis and I go to bed, and — oh my god — it is a time of such…
Fiasco (noun): A thing that is a complete disaster, especially in a ludicrous or humiliating way. Fiasco (noun): A bottle or flask. Especially a bulbous, long-necked, straw-covered bottle for wine. I worry — probably more than is reasonable and definitely…
This must have been eight or ten years ago — It was after one of my Saturday night services at Albuquerque Center for Spiritual Living. I was going in multiple directions at once, trying to have three simultaneous conversations, and…
Sometimes I get into these discomforting little eddies of self-doubt. Rarely do I remain stuck there for too long, but whirling around in it I still get pretty dizzy. Everything seems like too much or not enough. Like I’m too…
Last weekend, Patty Stephens led a “Hymnprov” workshop, where a bunch of us talked and riffed and improvised for a couple of hours, and then emerged at the end with a groovy new song that we’d written together. We’ll sing…
I finally watched David Byrne’s American Utopia this week. And I’m so very glad I did! It has been in my queue for over a year (streaming on HBO/Max). Though I was intrigued and had heard that it was good,…