I spent the weekend raging. Beginning on Friday night, glued to the links I’d followed from Facebook about the Charlie Hebdo murders, I raged against the simplicity of media analysis, raged against hatred, and then, at midnight, sitting up in bed, I raged against my husband for not “getting” politics and race in precisely the…
Yesterday, after my husband and I woke to the sound of our children giggling in their bedroom, but before they came and crawled into bed with us, I turned to him and asked, “What are you thankful for?” He answered, “Pretty much the whole thing.” So there you go. Thank you, whole thing. I guess…
A poem for Flood Wall Street and the People’s Climate March September 21-22, 2014 Today I’m staying in my pajamas because I can. I’m curling back in bed with my computer and checking Facebook, not one time, not two times, but eighteen times while my children are at school. I might bake cookies.…
This weekend a good friend and I spent the day together at the coast. As we walked along the marshy trail to the beach, the air was warm and breezy, the sky shifting from silver-cast to blue and back again, the earth dark and pleasingly mucky, and the herbs and grasses and native flowers all…
Today I walked on the thirsty Earth, and tipped my tongue to the skies. My ancestors tasted the sweetness of rain. Over the past few weeks, I have felt the human energy gathering, gathering, around the idea of scarcity, or disaster. Over the past few days, I have felt the sigh of watery relief rising…
First published by the Pacific Zen Institute at pacificzen.orgDecember 2013 On Monday night at the Santa Rosa zendo we sat with the koan about peach blossoms. It went pretty much like this: A woman wandered in the mountains, and became lost. As she rounded a bend, she saw peach blossoms on the other side of…