A few years ago I picked up a little book called Faith by Sharon Salzberg, a Buddhist meditation teacher and now best-selling author. I don’t remember exactly why this book caught my attention. Perhaps I was intrigued by the first page where it said that faith was not synonymous with religion, yet I’d always thought it was. I remember enjoying this book tremendously the first time I’d read it, but I couldn’t remember why. I felt it was time to read it again and here’s what I discovered. Read more »

“We all fall down in life…the secret to happiness is how fast you can get back up.” This Facebook post from author and spiritual speaker, Denise Linn, recently caught my attention. She shared that she had been feeling a bit sad and depressed, but she also realized that she could pick herself up more easily because of her spiritual tools. Read more »

Makeover summer! That’s what it’s felt like. I had the exterior of my house repainted, a new front fence, and a complete redesign of my front yard landscaping. It has taken weeks of planning and many days of workers doing their thing. All went smoothly barring a few leaky faucets. Whew! Read more »

The school year has ended. I have completed my 25th year of teaching and summer has begun. Believe it or not, while teachers are ecstatic about the school year ending and having some time off, there is a week or two of disequilibrium as they adjust to a slower pace. (Although it must be added that since summer is an unpaid “vacation,” some must continue a fast clip into a summer job.) Once you arise out of your stupor and realize you are free for a few weeks, you find yourself trying to accomplish every task you’ve put off for the last 10 months so that you can go back to work in August having accomplished something. At least that was always my way of doing things. But this summer is different! This is my endless summer because I won’t be returning to teaching in August. After 25 years, I have retired. Read more »

“It doesn’t feed my soul,” I remember thinking. I was in my fifties at the time, and I was referring to my job. I was quite surprised. It didn’t even sound like something I would say, but I knew what it meant. There was a void, an emptiness that needed filling. At that same time, I would often find myself saying, “When I retire I’m going to…” and I’d finish the sentence with something I’d always wanted to do, like work with animals or something creative with art or writing. I was feeling the need to dig deeper into who I was and to reconnect with the person I once had been. I felt like I’d Iost pieces of myself somewhere along life’s path, and the need to be revitalized was now hitting a crucial tipping point. Read more »

I don’t know about you, but I’m a big planner. Planning is good. Without it we might not move forward or pay our bills or cook dinner or accomplish what we need to at work or in life. I must have a little bit of drifter in me too, however, because this is not the article I sat down to write this week. I had another one all planned out with notes and everything, but I let myself drift in another direction. Read more »

We say that the only sure thing in life is that it will change. These changes, welcome or not, can range from the tiniest ones, like waves gently lapping at our feet, all the way to shifts that hit like a tsunami. For me last fall, the sea of change was gentle. Life was rolling along easily, and it felt good. Stay in this moment and enjoy this feeling I told myself, but no one can stop the natural flow of life. There were rumblings, concerns. I watched. I tried not to worry, but the tsunami hit with life altering force. Read more »

I can’t say that I’ve written all my life, but I can say that I’ve felt a need to write all my life. I was blessed to have two middle school teachers with wonderful writing programs. The first had us writing each day to develop our fluency. She also insisted upon an outline for each piece, and while I rarely used outlines after that, I have to admit this did teach me to organize. The next year I had a teacher who taught us about creativity. Each week he showed us a picture from the back of “Look” magazine and asked us to create a story around the scene in the picture. The photos were always quirky and amazing and defied reasonable explanations, leaving only room for imagination to take hold. Read more »

Can you remember a time in your life when coincidences ran wild? I sure can. I was divorced in my thirties. I had two small children and a life to redesign. Fear, confusion and turmoil cascaded in upon my life as I tried to find my way. Yet within this swirling mess, order would appear when and where it was least expected. Read more »

Since ancient times humans have attempted to explain coincidences, those random events that somehow seem connected. Mark Twain was fascinated by the phenomenon and kept personal writings about incidents that he called mental telegraphy. He believed that individuals were sending what we might now call telepathic messages to each other, consciously or unconsciously. Read more »