“Sir, there is nothing more you can do here. Your wife is gone. But here is what you can do," the nurse said, "I want you to go home and gather up all of your wife's dirty clothes. I want you to put them in a plastic trash bag and tie it up tightly."

The first time I heard this story from a doctor colleague I paused, anxiously waiting for the rest of the narrative to be shared.

My first art class I was a freshman in high school. I loved my art teacher - also a first. A first crush on an older man - Mr. Brock. He taught be about Zen (claimed he was a Zen Catholic), Hegel's Theory of Dialectics, and drawing. Not just any drawing - beginner's mind drawing. I didn't realize that until I was much older and more immersed in Buddhism and practicing Zen. Those moments in his class 33 years later are as clear and true as if they happened yesterday.

When I volunteered to write for this novena, I specifically asked to be on the back end…during one of the nine-day gratitude novenas. See, gratitude is my comfortable place. Even in the midst of so much that breaks my heart in our world today, I am, on most days, equally overwhelmed by the good (like my deep appreciation for this community). Gratitude is a response to something we have received or witnessed or experienced. It is in relation to something else. Gratitude is dialogical.

The heavy wood door slams. "Mom, I'm home." All boy. Your ten year old self comes barreling into the kitchen. Fair skin flushed and spiky blond hair stands on tiptoe from repeatedly wiping the sweat from your forehead. The afternoon recess still radiates from your skin. Your heat touches me before I take you in my arms and squeeze. My air conditioned epidermis melts into your hot, damp flesh.

Leaning in, my nose kisses the top of your head. I breathe in - sunscreen, asphalt, sweat....and.... there it is ... the scent I search for. I settle in for as long as you will let me reveling in the aroma of you. What I call your baby smell grows fainter every year, but it's still there. It's concentrated where  one of your soft spots used to be.

Traveling one summer in Istanbul, I had just left Hagia Sophia and was headed back to my hotel. I could feel someone's eyes on me. A blond American woman in Turkey quickly gets accustomed to the probing eyes of men. When I turned around, I met the gaze of a woman in a black burqa. Every part of her veiled, except her eyes. And she had the most beautiful ones I'd ever seen.  Huge. Almond shaped. Dark as a starless night. Time expanded. I stood completely still, trying to return her gaze, it's intensity consuming.

We invite you to explore how to intentionally live this season in body, mind, and spirit as we share an evening of gentle yoga, thoughtful reflection, and sacred ritual.

Friends, we are intentionally shifting this from a larger venue (which charged a fee) to a more intimate space at the home of Jen Wewers (where we can have fire and more creativity!)

After college, I read Mary Catherine Bateson's Composing a Life. Even then I knew I wasn't destined for a linear career trajectory. My parent's hope for that smooth path died as soon as I came home from my second year of college and announced I was majoring in Religion. My first generation college student/accountant father was especially challenged by my choice.

Dear Friends and Family,

Max has graduated high school! I still can’t believe it. So many of you have had a hand in raising this boy.

For those of you who were with me during the early and sometimes dark periods of new motherhood, thank you.

You, who joined me at Tompkins Square Park and celebrated birthdays of my bright blond boy in very small NYC spaces, thank you.

While brushing my teeth in my normal mad dash to get my son to school and me to work in the morning, a small black spider walked out of the drain and tried to jump out of the bathroom sink. Instinctively, I pushed her down and let the water take her back down the drain. 

Right before the water swirled her back into the hole from which she came, I thought "Shoot, is this a sign?" I grabbed by Medicine Cards book to look up the meaning of pulling the Spider card. I searched through the deck until I found the right card.  Spider medicine represents our creativity. "Great!" I thought, "I just flushed my creativity down the drain." I also took a look at the Pueblo story about the creation of the world. My hunch was right. Spider Woman. She wove all of creation from the web of her thoughts. 

The second day of our Obie reunion we decided to hike to see Marymere Falls in Olympic National Park. It was a short walk and close to the Lake Crescent Lodge where we were staying. It started off simple enough. For a prairie girl, the trees were the tallest I have ever seen. Green everywhere.

What a great teacher fear can be. My first night at the Ojo Cabin I opted to potentially wet the bed instead of going to the outhouse in the middle of the night. My fear of creatures, combined with being alone, made my sense of adventure wane after sunset. For those who are curious? I didn't wet the futon. The next morning

Dave, my host at my first night’s lodging in Ojo Caliente, guided me from the moment I crossed into New Mexico. He had warned GPS was unreliable and with a pretty big mountain thunderstorm underway and after 13 hours of driving I was one tired traveler and not surprisingly, got lost.

Are you overwhelmed by the onslaught of suggestions about New Year's Resolutions? Lose weight. Get in shape. Spend more time with family. According to the pollsters at Marist, the top resolutions for 2018 are - being a better person and losing weight. Being a better person is a bit fuzzy about how one would achieve that. But losing weight? That's one we can track.

Last night the moon woke me up. I opened the bamboo shades and my bedroom was filled with her light.Whereas the sun energizes me to move outward, the moon coaxes me inward. Recently two opportunities arose to speak with friends about how my parents’ deaths have invited me to enter more fully into my life. It seems a paradox, but deep inside I know it to be true.

I didn’t expect my grief for my dad and my mom to be so different from one another. Feeling a connection to mom has been easier, perhaps because we are/were so much alike? I can’t yet talk about Dad without crying. Not weeping just my eyes overflowing. Today someone sent me the lyrics to Donovan’s “Jennifer Juniper.”

It's been a few years since I've spent so much time in my yard planting flowers, battling hungry rabbits, and weeding. Lots of weeding. I haven't mulched the backyard flowers yet and it's almost July. In Kansas. It wasn't intentional this no mulching non decision that by default became a decision. 

 What you don't know about grief, love, and loss is that, for me, there was so much to be grateful for.

Standing in the wake lines at both my parent's funerals, I heard so many stories of the impact they had on others' lives. The bartender at the bowling alley where my dad and his friends sometimes went after work told me she had been a single mom in the 70's and 80's and my dad would slip her extra money. The grey haired guy who told me my dad was his first boss and he remembered how good and helpful he was. His first annual review was with my dad. So many people from his work came and told me stories about my dad. I got a deeper glimpse into how he helped the folks he worked with.

I used to be a daughter. Now, I'm a 48 year old orphan. It always felt like there was a bit of a buffer between me and death - the buffer being my mom and dad.  They were a generational barrier keeping death clearly on the other side. But now? I'm naked. No one and nothing to break my fall. It's like I'm standing at the spillway at Wyandotte County Lake after a big storm. I look over the edge and hear the water rushing into nothingness. It's terrifying and yet there's a place in me that wonders what it would be like to just fall into the darkness.

At the beginning of this year I started working for a nonprofit I loved.  I was invited to raise money and awareness for communities I am so passionate about - the homeless, folks with mental illness, good people struggling to make ends meet and needing quality health care and students, lots of students. A perfect fit.

We know making an emotional connection with our donors and supporters is essential for success in raising awareness and funds for our missions.  At it's most basic we do that through telling stories. But many of us are increasingly uncomfortable with the influence of a formulaic and provocative "let me push your cry button" style of storytelling overtaking our communications