I invite you now to join me in the spirit of meditation and imagination. Find a comfortable position in your seat and close your eyes. Take a deep breath and try to find the restorative power of air and water in the breath. We must breathe to live, but our bodies also need water to survive. Our...

All that we have been separately and all that we will become together is stretched out before and behind us like stars scattered across a canvas of sky. We stand at the precipice, arms locked together like tandem skydivers working up the courage to jump. Tell me, friends: What have we got to lose?

When you heard that voice and knew finally it called for you and what it was saying—where were you? Were you in the shower, wet and soapy, or chopping cabbage late for dinner? Were you planting radish seeds or seeking one lost sock? Maybe wiping handprints off a window or coaxing words into a...

EARTH, clay from which we are made and to which we will return. Soil, rich and aromatic, crumbling in my fingers, dark under my nails. This, cleansing dirt, the natural filter for aquifers, holds life....

I knew a man who had printed on his stationary this proverb: “Nothing is settled. Everything matters.” It established a certain ambience for reading his letters, as if to say: what you are about to read is to be taken seriously, but is not final. I remember him and his proverb sometimes,...

I will lift up my voice and sing; Whatever may befall me, I will still follow the light which kindles song. I will listen to the music Arising out of grief and joy alike, I will not deny my voice to the song....

Dear God: Good Friday is gone—a dark day on the calendar, A time of suffering—with more losses than gains, And more pain than we thought we could bear. We are tired of crying, We are tired of burying, We are tired of mourning. But Easter is here—and we who survived are prepared For the turning...

What a gathering—the purple tongues of iris licking out at spikes of lupine, the orange crepe skirts of poppies lifting over buttercup and daisy. Who can be grim in the face of such abundance? There is nothing to compare, no need for beauty to compete. The voluptuous rhododendron and the plain...

Like those shepherds who were on the hillsides with their flocks, like those wise ones in their observatories with their telescopes and astronomical charts, we find our daily work interrupted by these holidays. Like them, we can’t keep on working, we have to listen to singing angels, we have to...

Early spring awakens memories of a deeper cold and hopes of a warmer wetness, sprouting seeds and budding branches. Gray trees on gray sky screen eyes from all that lies waiting: the color of a million flowers, the feathers of migrating songbirds, the blossoming smiles of friends. Soon we will no...