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The title of the interview was “The Pleasures of Disorientation”--a phrase that caught my attention. It was another in Conversations with Billy Collins, and from it came these words, in response to the question, “What is it about mystery and disorientation that is so appealing?”: For disorientation to be
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I have had a quiet day today marking what would have been my mother’s ninety-first birthday. As I sat down to write, I went back to what I wrote for and read at her memorial service. They seemed like good words to repeat. When my father died, I adapted
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the reading list I finished reading one of my Christmas books today: The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams. Ginger gave it to me because “it looked like I would like it.” She was right. The book centers around the relationship between two people: Mukesh, a widower who lives in
sermon
The sermon below is one I preached for a church on the other side of New Haven to candidate to be their Bridge Pastor for the next five or six months. I started not to post it because it is kind of “teachy” (as I described it to Ginger) and,
poetry
meal prep the boxes of dried pasta in my pantry are harbingers invitations to improvisation promises that dinner can be something even on nights when I don’t know what to cook set a pot of water to boil and then open the fridge and find what wants to be
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The afternoon that they moved my mother into hospice her doctor came to check on her. Although we all knew she would never leave the hospital, her death was not imminent. She looked at the doctor and said, “If my goal is heaven, what do I have to do?” He
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For the last seven years the first two weeks of January have belonged to my mother. She went into hospice just after New Year’s Day 2016 and died on January 15, three days after her eighty-fourth birthday. I got to spend all of those days with her. Tonight, this
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On this Twelfth Night, this Epiphany Eve, i found myself going back through some old posts and poems. I wrote the first version of the poem below when we lived in Marshfield, Massachusetts in a house 660 feet from Cape Cod Bay. Walking the beach at low tide was a
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In my newsletter yesterday, I leaned into a quote from Kieran Setiya. The last sentence reads, Don’t let the lure of the dramatic arc distract you from the digressive amplitude of being alive. I have been dealing with the article for a couple of days, but I didn’t
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All this week (wait--it’s only Tuesday!) I have been reading different takes on resolutions for the year ahead. A couple of them stood out to me. One was this picture of Woody Guthrie’s “New Year’s Rulin’s” from 1943. My favorites were 17-20: 17. don’t get
poetry
puzzling the last time I saw a puzzle spread out across the table was at my mother’s apartment some time after my dad died we sat across from each other she and I like we did when I was in high school each of us choosing a section the
poetry
meal as metaphor this penultimate night of the year was the night to make something out of everything to use up--no--to make the best out of a few things whose refrigerator visas had run out a pork tenderloin baby potatoes and green beans all had promise the supporting cast included