I went on retreat again at the nearby Benedictine Abbey of St. Walburga and while I was there, I was struck with a desire to go back to blessing my food, but from a new perspective.

Vexed as I was about vocation, I was quite certain that this was the job for me. So as is the custom in the Quaker community, I called on half a dozen trusted friends to help me discern my vocation by means of a "clearness committee," a process in which the group refrains from giving you advice but spends three hours asking you honest, open questions to help you discover your own inner truth.' (Looking back, of course, it is clear that my real intent in convening this group was not to discern anything but to brag about being offered a job I had already decided to accept!)

When I decided to hire a feng shui consultant, she arrived for our consultation and told me she almost couldn't find the house. The driveway was overgrown with trees and bushes, so the whole place was basically hidden from the road. I laughed, because of course it was.

At the time, I'd been doing all this inner work around wanting to feel more comfortable with visibility and fully showing up in my work and in my relationships, but my house was living out the exact opposite story.

When I was working for Ruminate (a contemplative literary magazine I started and led) we made art prints featuring a quote from the priest and writer Henri Nouwen. The quote was: “As long as we have our stories, there is hope.”

I still have one of these block prints and I saw it the other day and chuckled, thinking about how I now see these words very differently.

I used to think that our stories were one of the highest watermarks. Now I think that understanding our stories is important, but it’s not the endpoint. And actually, when we think it’s the endpoint, it can lock us into our identities and become a kind of cul-de-sac of endless introspection.

I love the author and poet Fanny Howe and am especially fond of her nonfiction work (The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation is a favorite). She passed last year, and I was thinking of her this morning and went back through my old emails to find an email I’d sent her five years ago this month.

When I first read Elizabeth Gilbert’s passage on trickster vs. martyr energy in her book Big Magic, it was a game-changer (boy, was I knee-deep in believing the trope about the suffering and starving artist at that point in my life)…

I love the permission to be utterly human in this poem—I was too tired!—and I like how it speaks to both seeing and missing the mystical moments of mercy and the nudges that are being extended to us each day.

Lately I’ve been really drawn to the idea of inner stability, probably because I’ve lived a lot of years totally scrambled and because the world feels so scrambled. This feels like an important task that is on my plate right now.  

One of my spiritual teachers, James (Jim) Finley, is a clinical psychologist and a teacher of contemplative spirituality and christian mysticism and he talks a lot about creating a kind of inner sturdiness or stability so that we can have a stable foundation from which to move and live and serve and love.

Some years ago I was listening to an interview with the Irish poet and theologian Pádraig Ó Tuama and he was speaking about trust and he said: "In Irish, when you talk about trust, there’s a beautiful phrase from West Kerry where you say, “Mo sheasamh ort lá na choise tinne”—“You are the place where I stand on the day when my feet are sore.”

I just finished a coaching training from Healing Our Core Issues that was deeply informed by the work of one of my favorite thinkers/teachers, Pia Mellody. Pia passed away this past May, but her model for healing codependence and developmental relational trauma continues to live on and has been life-changing for me and many of my clients.

A section in the training on needs and wants and interdependence really caught my attention because of its simple approach to a complex topic. Pia taught three important guidelines for interdependence…

When I was going through my divorce process I had a really difficult time getting clear on and saying what I wanted because I was so used to enmeshing with others and I was scared...of a lot of things, but probably top of the list was a fear of causing even more conflict. 

I've been studying feng shui this year and I love how physical and practical this ancient wisdom tradition is and how it works with the energy of both the seen and unseen…

Just a short note today to share a poem from the poet Tony Hoagland. I love how Tony showed and embraced his full humanity in his poems, which is something I’m continually learning about. Tony died seven years ago today.

I often remind my clients that the energy we bring to our writing process leaves a big imprint on the finished book. 

For example, if a book is about spiritual surrender but we're white-knuckling the writing process, the reader will feel this disconnect. They may not be able to articulate the reason, but they will sense it and the book will just feel "off."

Some years ago I read Dani Shapiro's insightful book on the creative process—Still Writing: The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life. 

Dani talked about a set of instructions she has pinned above her desk from the poet Jane Kenyon. I was struck by this short little list (which, of course, applies to any kind of conscious life, not just the writing life) and I quickly copied it down on paper and it has since kept me company at my own desk over the years...

I was telling a friend the other day how it really helps me to remember (and practice) my larger commitments when I'm struggling or feeling low. My larger commitments involve being of service and taking conscious responsibility for the life I've been given—basically to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. 

I sometimes forget the power of remembering this and I think it's because it seems fairly counterintuitive. If you're struggling, you might think you need to lower your expectations for yourself or just focus in on yourself. 

But for me, I need to widen the lens…

I read an interview with Oprah and Thích Nhất Hạnh and a little moment where she asked about his robe really struck me…

One of my teachers is the artist Meinrad Craighead. I found her work after she had passed in 2019, but I've felt so drawn to her work and so lucky to learn from her. I keep a photo on my desk of Meinrad sitting with her beloved dogs…

Seven or eight years ago, I listened to the poet David Whyte's audio series What to Remember When Waking over and over again. 

And one of his core principles that made the biggest impression on me was David's idea that to be a human being means that we feel a sense of exile in the world, a sense of not belonging. And this is just part of the make-up of being human. It doesn't mean we're doing something wrong, and in fact, our work is to consciously bear this sense of exile with compassion. He says…

When my son Finnley was in 8th grade and practicing for the upcoming soccer season, we had a battle over water bottles.
 
He was playing during the very hot summer months and he was also really struggling to keep track of his things. He lost his water bottle within the first couple days of practice and searched the lost and found, but no luck. So he took another one and I made threats about what would happen if he lost this one, and then he lost it.
 
Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. And lots of grumpy feelings going around.