Walking Each Other Home

Ram Dass said, “We’re all just walking each other home.” My friend, Pamela Chappell, wrote a song based on the quotation.   On my way to the remote Buddhist Sangha for the weekly meditation, my van bottomed out in one of the ginormous mud puddles. Two wheels were up in the air, and […]

Getting off with a Warning

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it…”RUMI

This morning a man who has written a daily thought for years put in his opening the following quotation about worry:

“How would your life be different […]

Happy Birthday Blessings

“You have not lived today until you have done something for someone who can never repay you.” ~John Bunyan When my sister came to Florida on Friday she could not have known the details of the warm welcome awaiting her. Oh, sure, the morning of her arrival the area experienced heavy thunderstorms (complete […]

Great Things Come in Small Packages!

When I found out I was going to be a grandma, I went kicking and screaming. I was only 39 years old, and I was way too busy to be a grandmother.  Everything changed 26 years ago today, when I held Bradley Joseph Zelenak for the first time. He truly is an “Angel […]

Truly Meaningful Gifts

The idea of meaningful gifts has been on my mind and in my heart for a good long while. December 13, 2015, I shared a talk about the subject when I was guest speaker at Pilgrim Congregational Church. As usual, none of my pre-thinking did anything to inoculate me from enough tears to sink […]

10-Year Itch

OMG – I just finished listening to Marie Forleo’s interview with Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love. In the interview, Gilbert is talking about Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. As a writer, I want to steal so many of her lines, but as a human being with a past littered with […]

Sunset of Life

Time is such an odd commodity. Some moments seem like days, and some years seem like moments. Without a doubt, my heart is tender right now with the passing of so many of late.  This morning, I posted a controversial commercial on Facebook about an elder man who faked his death to get […]

Finding Gratitude in Help from the Other Side

“It is the best of times, it is the worst of times.” This Thanksgiving I am aware of so many families finding gratitude amidst deep emotions: emotions related to loved ones having passed on since last year at this time. For some of us, the transition has been quite recent. Just yesterday, our […]

Terrorist Attacks and Tonglen

The worst terroristattack on a Western city since 9/11 unfolded in France on Friday, leaving the nation in a state of near-martial law.

This text message exchange with a dear friend:

K: Are you watching the news of Paris?

D: No, I just walked in the door […]

Phenomenal Retreat

Regular readers of this blog are not unfamiliar with my practice of going on silent meditation retreats, as I was blessed to do October 27-November 1. What a perfect timing for a much needed renewal on the heels of the transition of my mother-in-law on October 4, followed by the preparation for and […]