A Mindful Life

One ought to enter old age the way one enters the senior year at a university, in exciting anticipation of consummation. Rich in perspective, experienced in failure, the person advanced in years is capable of shedding prejudices and the fever of vested interests. He does not see anymore in every fellow man a person who [...]

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the [...]

Old age is something we are all anxious to attain. However, once attained we consider it a defeat, a form of capital punishment. In enabling us to reach old age, medical science may think is has given us a blessing; however, we continue to act as if it were a disease. More money and time [...]

To become aware of the ineffable is to part company with words. …The tangent to the curve of human experience lies beyond the limits of language. The world of things we perceive is but a veil. Its flutter is music, its ornament science, but what it conceals is inscrutable. Its silence remains unbroken; no words [...]

“When you have completed 95 percent of your journey, you are only halfway there.” – Japanese Proverb

“Sometimes, if you stand on the bottom rail of a bridge and lean over to watch the river slipping slowly away beneath you, you will suddenly know everything there is to be known.” –A.A. Milne What do you do on a restless Monday afternoon? You drive to Chesbro Reservoir to throw sticks and leaves in [...]

Kids are cute, babies are cute, puppies are cute. The little things are cute. See, nature did this on purpose so that we would want to take care of our young. Made them cute. Tricked us. Then gradually they get older and older, until one day your mother sits you down and says, “You know, [...]

I overheard Claire singing a made-up tune while she was looking at the Olivia book while on the potty. I took notes. Sometimes it even rhymes! The stanza breaks are mine based on when I heard her pause. My Sunshine Girl is not only a scientist, but also a lyricist and composer! I can hardly [...]

“A grapefruit is a lemon that had a chance and took advantage of it.” –Oscar Wilde

While the spirit of neighborliness was important on the frontier because neighbors were so few, it is even more important now because our neighbors are so many. -Lady Bird Johnson One generation plants the trees; another gets the shade. –Chinese proverb