My grandson slept for three hours in my lap yesterday afternoon. Slept my legs into their own nap. Slept through phones ringing, dogs barking, and the afternoon sun waning. Wrapped snugly in his swaddling cloth, he might have been another era’s baby, proof against technologies and innovations. One woman, an infant, a cloth. Nothing luxurious,…

When your own baby — never mind that he has two master’s degrees, is happily married, and moving all the way across the country — has a baby, it’s weird. Wonderful, but weird. Just sayin’. There’s a kind of disconnect: baby/ son/ son-as-father/ son-once-was baby… It’s kind of a strange loop. And yes, I did…

Have you ever watched a new baby? Seriously observed one? Focused on the wide eyes drinking in light (pre-birth is a bit dark…), the mouth twitching towards milk, the tiny fingers curling around support. Like most things in my life, watching a new baby seems a quintessentially Buddhist endeavour. It’s beyond illuminating. 🙂 Everything is…

Buddhism has little to say (at least that I know of) about grandmothers. In fact, I can’t think of a religion that does. Why is that? Surely somewhere in human wisdom traditions, someone has considered grandmothers? Because it seems to me, newly annointed grandmother (this weekend!!), that I have been preparing all my life for…

More from Beliefnet and our partners
More from Beliefnet and our partners