Cruises, Birthdays, and Dreams
Dear friends, Last night we returned home from a two-week birthday cruise that took us from Lisbon to Barcelona by way of the Gibraltar Strait and up Spain’s east coast to Barcelona. It was an amazing journey with lots of new places and adventures, including a tour through the Dracht’s (Dragon’s) caves, and a camel […]
What Did the Greek Caryatids Carry?
This is a follow-up from last week’s post titled Caryatids: Images of the Queen Archetype. Deborah wondered what the Caryatids on the Maiden Porch of the Greek temple on the Acropolis in Athens called the Erechtheum (or Erechtheion) might have been carrying in their hands. So I’ve just done some digging through my photographs taken […]
Staying Close and Letting Go
We must be willing to let go of the life we planned so as to have the life that is waiting for us. Joseph Campbell I’ve been writing this blog for eleven years and five months. I started in March of 2010 with two posts a week. Expressing myself freely and meeting so many wonderful […]
Solstice: A Coming Together of Creativity and Hope
“This is the solstice, the still point of the sun, its cusp and midnight, the year’s threshold and unlocking, where the past lets go of and becomes the future; the place of caught breath”. Margaret Atwood Yesterday we celebrated the summer solstice, Father’s Day, and our twin grandsons’ 19th birthdays with our son’s family when they […]
A Travel Story With a (Mostly) Happy Ending
After ten hours on the road we reach the gravel road that leads to our summer sanctuary. Nestled in a hollow surrounded by the Smoky Mountains, our cabin is bordered on the north by a bold creek and on the south by a national forest. Izzy’s golden head, now gray around her eyes and nose, […]
Surrendering to the the Pull of Love
“The mountains are calling and I must go…” –John Muir “Are we there yet?” Fred smiled indulgently at me from the driver’s seat of the car. I knew I sounded like a grumpy, impatient child. But it was late afternoon, I was hungry, stiff, and achy. And we were two hours away from our family […]
A Thanksgiving Blessing
You and I have Life. We have the capacity to be conscious of it and present to it in this moment. We can choose to let go of the past, stop worrying about the future, and attend to what is. Here. Now.
Tourist or Pilgrim? Which Are You?
Fred and I love to travel, so when we heard about his trip to the sacred sites of Greece this fall, we signed up. My favorites among Phil’s many books are The Art of Pilgrimage: The Seeker’s Guide to Making Travel Sacred, and Once and Future Myths: The Power of Ancient Stories in Modern Time. Since our return last week I’ve been thinking about how this trip combined the themes of these two books in a magical way that made this my favorite travel experience ever.
Embellishment
Last Saturday my half-Italian husband told me about a funny thing that happened earlier that day when he was at the grocery store with his brother-in-law, Gary. “Where’s the tomato sauce?” he asks Gary. Gary looks up and points to a sign and says, “Aisle 3. It says ‘tomato sauce.’”
The Sacrament of Paying Attention
The Church conducts sacraments to infuse life-changing experiences like birth, marriage, and death with sacred meaning. Many find these rituals deeply satisfying and enjoy the positive feelings they bring long afterwards.
