A Mindful Life

A double entry, for your reading pleasure. She read Dickens in the spirit in which she would have eloped with him. –Eudora Welty, “Listening,” One Writer’s Beginnings (1984) Whatever the theologians might say about Heaven being a state of union with God, I knew it consisted of an infinite library; and eternity … was simply [...]

I found this in the current issue of Utne: The right not to read The right to skip pages The right not to finish The right to reread The right to read anything The right to escapism The right to read anywhere The right to browse The right to read out loud The right not [...]

A pariah is something like a martyr with more suffering and less class. –Rita Mae Brown, Bingo (1986)

To despise riches may, indeed, be philosophic, but to dispense them worthily, must surely be more beneficial to mankind. –Fanny Burney, Evelina (1778)

Although the current temperature (90 degrees) belies the time of year, the retail world has begun its annual bludgeoning marketing of Christmas decorations; in some cases I have heard carols piping through store sound systems! I am dismayed, and am reminded why I shop for gifts early — to avoid the madness that overtakes us [...]

Rain fell in ropes and wind shuttled through them, webbing the city in its ephemeral weave. –Julia O’Faolain, No Country for Young Men (1980)

I did a Google News search on “sacred space,” and an article on a labyrinth caught my eye. I then Googled the words walking and labyrinth in the News section and was astonished to find 30 articles that mentioned labyrinths. I have often been curious about this meditative act, and I intend, someday, to explore [...]

Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. –Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace (1947)

Today is thanksgiving. Well, every day is, when I make the effort to be mindful of all that is well in my life. I met with a colleague for several hours today, discussing the work of psychotherapy and the process of creating meaning in one’s life. I thoroughly enjoyed meeting with this person (whom I’d [...]

My diaries were written primarily, I think, not to preserve the experience but to savor it, to make it even more real, more visible and palpable, than in actual life. For in our family an experience was not finished, not truly experienced, unless written down or shared with another. –Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Bring Me a [...]