A Mindful Life

I wish my blog were famous and had millions of readers so this video could reach many, many people. If the video doesn’t show/play then click to watch it here. I’ve not read any of David Foster Wallace’s books, but hearing this speech I can’t help but wish he was still alive.

Oh, to sink into silence. To breathe. To wait. No rituals, no incense, no chants, no words. Just silence and a straight-backed wooden chair. The silence is alive. Traffic zips down the highway. Chairs creak. Birds gossip. Someone coughs or sniffs. But if you really listen, you can hear the sunshine singing. Sometimes the entire [...]

Watch and feel. Or try this link.

Today, for whatever reason, I am feeling how we all struggle to be here. How much we need to love each other, and how we need to practice that love in deed and word. Once upon a time I struggled to meet my basic needs while working to reach some lofty goals. My life, through [...]

God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled. -Author Unknown Until I attended graduate school at St. Edward’s University, I didn’t know much about Dia de los Muertos. In 1997, after I’d left the fundamentalist non-denominational church I’d been with for years — and with it my entire social [...]

The first time I heard this spoken-word passage, I was so moved I had to pull off the road and cry. It was a few months after 9/11. It resonates with me still. If you have a few minutes, maybe if you listen it will speak to you too. If the embed isn’t working you [...]

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of [...]

“A journey is like marriage. The certain way to be wrong is to think you control it.” -John Steinbeck Been on the road and in the air a bunch this summer. School starts for Claire on August 20. Kindergarten, all day, everyday. A big journey ahead!

Now the same acts drew up the ties between them, put them back together, as though shaping the world from scratch. As they worked, they put the sky in place above, the trees in the ground. They invented color and air and scent and gravity. Laughter and sadness. They discovered truth and lies and mock-lies [...]