Category: A Life of Meaning

A Life of Meaning /

What If

What if These tiny green leavesWaiting at my feetAre not the weeds I’veBeen taught to disdain,Meant to be hacked withMy implements ofRitual and sermon,Doused with pietyAnd holy water,Starved with fasting andNegotiation,Suffocated withThe weed-block of thatEndless noiseI call prayer. What if These tiny green leavesAre simply life formsI don’t recognizeYet as beautiful,With all my labels,Depictions writtenBy witnesses whoOnly rememberA garden defiled,Who can’t see lionAnd lamb lying downIn stillness besideThorn and rose bloomingTogetherIn beauty. What if I lay down Both sword and plowshare, And kneeling, let my Fingers slowly touchThe strange edges Of my own…

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A Life of Meaning /

A Tea Blending Life

It’s a Mixing World Here I think some tea purists would shudder at my love of tea blending. And I understand. I understand that there are some teas that need to be enjoyed on their own, without additions. I love the simple elegance of a rare Kumaon tea from the Himalayas, sipped from beautiful china. And I also love the humble kitchen-garden herbs of rural America that bloom anywhere, sometimes in the most unwelcoming conditions. I love their healing, nurturing qualities, and the simplicity of an herbal tisane in a pottery mug, sipped…

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A Life of Meaning /

The Power of Story and the Healing of Creative Work

To keep track of these lives we live is not just a means of enriching our understanding… but a truly sacred work…Our secrets are human secrets, and our trusting each other enough to share them with each other has much to do with the secret of what it is to be human. – Frederich Buechner In Frederich Buechner’s book, Telling Secrets, he tells the story of his father’s suicide when he was ten years old. He explores how this event followed him though his life, and how our ways of remembering can be…

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A Life of Meaning /

I Love That House

What is it about certain houses that wrap us in a feeling of home? In the middle of a city, or in the middle of a small town, or in the middle of a silent woods, we see her. We stop, and take a step closer. If we are lucky, we enter her doors, and we find ourselves whispering, I love this house. We call this a house with soul. But what brings about this magic?

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A Life of Meaning /

An Old Kitchen and True Hygge

I remember a kitchen. It was a big, plain kitchen with a long, plain table. Cupboards lined one of the yellow walls. It was a pale, watered-down yellow that faded into the yellow linoleum. An old black stove with a shelf along the back stood stoutly along one wall, with a percolator of coffee on one burner, the gas flame flickering underneath. It was a kitchen that would never win likes on Instagram. But there was a feeling in that kitchen that no perfectly staged picture could ever capture.

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