114 Snow blanketed the air beyond the porch, erasing the driveway and road. Wind howled, the temperature neared zero, and it was almost dark, but Vic wasn’t home. Was he in a ditch somewhere? If he left
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204 I live in a rural sanctuary, but who can forget the pain of the world—the environmental, pandemic, and political threats, racism, families separated, and people dying alone? Who can forget that many won’t help others stay
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274 In the American Brahman Bookstore in Ithaca, NY in the late 1960s, a group drawn to the store and teacher learned meditation sitting on lumpy mismatched cushions. At home, Vic and I committed to sitting in
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196 During this quarantine without life’s usual distractions, anxiety follows me like my puppy. I’m safe, but the Earth trembles. I smother one flaming fear by reminding myself I’m OK. Then another flares. When my husband was
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237 I dropped into a Deep Well of Grief this morning. I grieved for dreams shattered, especially for younger people, for dying humans everywhere, for a struggling world and suffering planet. Then I did what I do
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299 This ancient prayer of Thanksgiving comes from the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) people. The prayer is used to give thanks, bless gatherings, and greet the day. I plan to read it at a Thanksgiving gathering this year and
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968 Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final ~ Rainer Maria Rilke, “Go to the Limits of Your Longing,” The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, 1905 (trans.
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127 Monarch butterflies arrived in the Finger Lakes in mid June to sip thistle and milkweed nectar, mate, and lay eggs on the underside of milkweed leaves. As I
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109 My phone buzzes. The screen reads “restricted number.” Probably an advertiser, but it could be my mother-in-law’s Hospicare nurse, so I pick up. “Hi Elaine, it’s Ray.” Ah, the Hospicare nurse. “Virginia has an infection on
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192 “For one human being to love another; that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation.” ~ Rainer
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