• Being Human - Darkness - Family - Fear - Hope - Light - Loss

    Fishing & The Hospital Bed

    September 20, 2014 - By 

    Yesterday they brought a hospital bed into my father’s house Of course, in the past few weeks he has been declining and now he doesn’t have the strength to get up. But he did try, anyway. And of course, he fell. Dad has always been so independent…wanted to do things his way….so now he is being offered containment. With high rails on the sides, it is his worst nightmare:: a hospital bed. The guys from hospice took apart his own bed–the same one that I crawled into when I was young and had nightmares. The same bed where I slept…

  • Being Human - Blessings - Differences - Difficulty - Hope

    Spam & Pomegranates

    September 15, 2014 - By 

    Today I take off on a flight of fancy. So…. Spam, you know, is more than just unwanted email. At one time, and still – and forevermore, it was and is Mystery Meat, arriving as a gift in a blue tin package. And so it was on the same radio show where Martha Stewart talked about pomegranates that she also explained a great way to prepare Spam. Martha Stewart was, as you may or may not know, raised in a family of six children. So, she said, she knows a lot about Spam. First, she suggested, find some really, really…

  • Being Human - Family - Hope

    The Way of the Pencil

    September 9, 2014 - By 

    Next to my grandparents’ telephone was a little silver can of little sharp pencils. Very little pencils. As would be a full-sized pencil, now used up and sharpened, all the way down to the eraser. Every part of that pencil used except for the very end…sharpened and ready to begin…just before the end. My grandfather lived during the depression. For him as for many, to cast away anything so precious as a pencil stub was to waste money on another pencil — that could have been used for an apple, a sandwich….a coffee…or flour to make bread for a family.…

  • Childhood - Hope

    Parking-Propelled Panoply Perfection

    September 8, 2014 - By 

    But ah, the exuberance of teenagers. Where I live, when there is a football game, the whole town is transformed. Everywhere you will find exuberance and excitement and the color red. Well yesterday, I was off to my morning thing and passed a local school…all along the road you could see 14 and 15-year old boys (don’t ask me how I know, I just know) holding signs saying “Football Parking, $5". They are jumping up and down. They are beside themselves. They are splendid! I am stopped — four of them rush over to my car — ‘hey, come and…

  • Being Human - Light

    The Dress and The Sock Drawer

    September 3, 2014 - By 

    Well you see, I bought a dress online. It seemed like a good idea at the time. It looked nice! …Black field, curving chains… I don’t know what I was thinking. When the dress arrived — to say it was unsuitable would be an understatement. With all the chains I looked as though I was a prisoner on a pirate ship. I looked like I was about the walk the plank. I looked like Harry Houdini jumping into a tank of water. The dress was just plain wrong. When I tried to return the dress, my computer screen showed —…

  • Being Human - Childhood - Hope - Light

    The Twenty-Dollar Bill

    August 22, 2014 - By 

    When we lived in St. Louis I taught kindergarten sunday school. At the beginning of class, as in many sunday schools, first we took attendance and then we collected a little something for charity. On one particular day we passed the small donation envelope around the room. Quarters fell in, dimes, on top of one another, ‘clink, clink . . . clink.’ It was little Lauren’s turn. She had found a twenty-dollar bill at a store earlier that week and had turned it in to the store’s ‘lost and found’. After a few days the store called her parents to…

  • Being Human - Childhood - Fear - Hope - Safety

    We’d like to put you in a home.

    August 19, 2014 - By 

    When I was a little girl, I always thought I would live near Chicago. It had never, in fact, occurred to me that any one of us might leave. But then, for me, there was California and then Missouri – Georgia and now Wisconsin. Finding a home and making a home has become very important to me. It might be also for many people. My friend’s nine-year old daughter continued to look at houses on zillow.com, for hours at a time– for three months after they had already moved. Was she still looking for a place to belong? A hundred…

  • Being Human - Darkness - Hope

    Everything is a Seed.

    August 15, 2014 - By 

    There is violence, racism and inequality in our world. It begins somewhere…with a seed of mistrust.   Who planted this seed? I did.   Because seeds begin with us and we plant them, intentionally or not. As a hopeful soul there are always seeds that I want to plant.  And those hardly ever grow.  It is hit or miss, basically. Along with all the other hopeful souls in the four-season world, the end of summer makes me excited for the bulbs which I can plant in September for the time when life returns after long winter. I gaze longingly at the…

  • Being Human - Fear - Hope

    “Is this all there is?”

    August 13, 2014 - By 

    Two years before my father died, he was refusing medical treatment. At that time it became increasingly apparent that if he did not choose treatment soon, his passing would be very soon after. It had not been very much time — perhaps only a year — since his own mother had died, just before her 103rd birthday. So there we were, in the hospital.   My father said to me “why didn’t I have 103 years?” And then: “Is this all there is??” To me, this was the most spectacular question I had ever heard — not to mention the…

  • Being Human

    Everyone Has Bones

    August 10, 2014 - By 

    A hundred years ago, when I was in college, it was my job to plan all the big events for the university’s Student Union. And when it was Halloween and I had to plan the Student Union Party, I had this bright idea (!?) that I wanted a skeleton to greet everyone as they entered the party.  As it turns out, to find a skeleton at a large university is not the most difficult thing in the world, if you are willing to work for it. And I was. After inquiring all over campus, I finally found a skeleton at…

  • Darkness - Hope - Light

    What We Can See In The Dark

    August 6, 2014 - By 

    “The world, you see, is happier after the terror of the storm. You have noticed that truth comes into this world with two faces – one that is sad with suffering and the other laughs. But it is the same face – laughing or weeping – as lightning illuminates the dark…” — Black Elk In the epic story of creation, it is said that on the first day the Divine separated light from dark. Such a beautiful image – but when you consider that the sun, moon and stars were not yet created until the fourth day – then which…

  • Asian Medicine - Light - Loss

    Shared from Finer Points: Linking to Heaven

    August 5, 2014 - By 

    Finer Points: Linking to Heaven: I had a patient come into my office today in terrible shape. His thirty-seven year old son died suddenly four days ago. I was amazed that he came for his appointment…but also knew that because he was there that I could help him. Of course, there was no way that I could bring his son back…but I could help him to deal with the grief from his loss. I was not surprised that he had just come down with a cold…because grief damages the Lungs. Ah, the Lungs, the Lungs. Our link to heaven. They…

  • Being Human

    Coffee and Cravings

    August 5, 2014 - By 

    They say that a little bit of what you love is good for you, right? Because I love coffee. I have stopped drinking it for a long, long time now. In fact, I am afraid to go back to it because, for me, it is like cocaine. I am not just talking about the buzz…of course there’s that…but about the flavor, the bitterness, the sweetness, the blackness, (not just the color but something ineffable, dark, unnameable) the ohhhhhh. I don’t know what it is that I want so much. It is almost transcendental. I am sure that my husband will…

  • Childhood - Darkness - Fear - Light - Safety

    The Worst Thing That Could Happen

    August 4, 2014 - By 

    When I was a little girl living near Chicago, I imagined that the worst thing that could happen would be if a tornado hit my school. Several times during the school year our principal would get on the loudspeaker and announced “Operation Ajax” — which meant that we would line up at the door and proceed into the hallway where there were no windows — sitting against the walls with our heads between our knees — our arms protecting our necks against potential flying glass. As it happened, my school was never actually hit by a tornado. A few years…

  • Childhood - Darkness - Fear - Hope

    Perspective and Innocence

    August 1, 2014 - By 

      Three days ago this happened: There is a family in Tel Aviv…many families in Tel Aviv…who go to the shelters with their children when the alarms sound. This family has two little boys — ages 4 and 7. One night this week the air sirens sounded. The family hurried to the shelter. It was 2:30 am. The sleepy 7 year-old said to his mom: “ema, which army do you like better…which army do you want to win”? Well, this young mother didn’t honestly know how to answer. How does one explain to a little boy about death and war…