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Beginner's Heart

Today was a Starbucks day. I realise that Starbucks isn’t everyone’s fave. It’s not local (but it employs a LOT of locals!), and it’s not trendy. Still, I like Starbucks. They’re always (well, almost always) nice to me, and I like the coffee. When folks give me small thank-you cards from Starbucks? I’m ecstatic! Back…

When I count the many elements of my life for which I’m grateful, my mother-in-law (and father-in-law) are BIG. I recognise that many women don’t even like their mother-in-laws, much less love them like a 2nd mother. Not me. For years, my mother-in-law has been one of my best of friends, a cracker-jack mentor, and the most present of…

I am blessed w/ the most thoughtful & generous of friends. As anyone who has the slightest contact w/ me (through this blog or otherwise) knows, this has been a very rough week. Deaths, heart attacks, ugly lawsuits, and more. Not my happiest week! So here comes yesterday’s mail, only retrieved from the mailbox this…

If you’re not realllllly sure what the humanities are, you’re in good company. When I tell folks I work w/ the state Humanities Council, they look almost as uneasy as when I tell them I write poetry (I don’t confess to either much in public gatherings). They’re just so… humanist, those humanities. Or so we’ve come…

Someone in my family — probably either Aunt Bonnie or Grandmother Britton — used to say that you choose to be happy. Each morning, she told me, you make that choice. It’s a decision. So today? I’m choosing a happy face. There’s research I read somewhere (today’s that kind of indeterminate day) that say you…

At times like this, I don’t know what I’d do w/out tonglen. When I’m grieving for a loved one’s unhappiness, or breathing through my own, I remember: all over the world there is suffering. I know – how hokey is that? But you know what? It helps. Every time, it saves me. This week several dear…

I wish I could send out, over the ethernet, the fragrance of the peach tea I made today. I wish there was a way to bottle the steam spiralling from the cup, comforting on a worrying day. Often when I worry, it’s not for me. I worry about my younger son (although he called last…

You know that saying ‘it takes a village’? Well, it does. For any endeavour worth remembering, it takes collaboration. Varied viewpoints, multiple hands, and a LOT of coordination. Witness my niece’s shower. While I reap the accolades of my niece’s showers, it could never have happened w/out the help of my 3 sisters and a couple…

I know, your mother told you not to. But now you’re a grown-up, and I beg you to reconsider. You’re sooo missing out! Yesterday I had the loveliest conversation with two strangers — two of the many I meet daily. Two of the many I almost always talk to (much to the eye-rolling of my…

I was thinking today about how much I dislike meditating. Not the actual act, but the resistance I have to just doing it. KNOWING that sometime during the day, I should take out the time to sit down and breathe. Now really: how hard is that?? Hard. As hard as adult tonsillectomies. As hard as graduate…
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