Recovery. Sobriety. Living Wise.
Sometimes a childhood event can become so defining that it is replayed a thousand times over the course of our life, reminding us of what we already know but somehow choose not to remember. Let me share one such moment with you. I grew up on a street that bordered a gully that we knew as Wolf Creek Ravine. I crossed the bridge over this … Continue reading Descent Into Fear
May I strike my heart’s keys clearly, and may none fail because of slack, uncertain, or fraying strings. May the tears that stream down my face make me more radiant: may my hidden weeping bloom. How we waste our afflictions!… They’re really our wintering foliage, our dark greens of meaning, one of the seasons of the clandestine year; not only a season: they’re site, settlement, shelter, soil, abode. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke Poetry … Continue reading Finding A Safe Place
Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are.When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you. ∼ Lao Tzu Contentment? What is contentment? As a younger man I would have choked on the admonition to rejoice in the way things are. It took a long time for a butterfly to find my shoulder. No illustration better describes … Continue reading Finding Contentment
We live in a time reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s stories of the distorted world visited by Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. In that world Alice was captive to a screwball place of lies, distortions, and made-up reality. When I was about the age of Alice, Walt Disney produced a TV special about these tales and I remember, at the time, how … Continue reading Coming of Age in a Time of Disillusionment
On this anniversary of the signing of the Armistice ending the First World War my thoughts have gone to wars that never end and a peace that can’t be found. The Armistice we commemorate was not a call for a German unconditional surrender. Instead it signaled a suspension of hostilities, a break in the fighting, a call for a negotiated settlement. It was neither decisive … Continue reading Surrender