Poem for a Sunday Morning

February 16                                               An early morning fog. In fair weather, the shy past keeps its distance. Old loves, old regrets, old humiliations look on from afar. They stand back under the trees. No

Poem for a Sunday Morning

At Nightfall {Ted Kooser} In feathers the color of dusk, a swallow, up under the shadowy eaves of the barn, weaves now, with skillful beak and chitter, one bright white feather into her nest to guide her flight home in the darkness. It has taken a hundred thousand years for a bird to learn this

Beware the False Dichotomy

I read an article today that talked about the leadership challenge of navigating the difference between “wartime” and “peacetime” leadership. It’s not a valid question because it’s based on a false dichotomy. The distinction between “wartime” and “peacetime” suggests a dualistic, either/or approach to leadership. The discussion centered on working with the intersection of these

Poem for a Sunday Morning

Dear Darkening Ground {Rainer Maria Rilke} Dear darkening ground, you’ve  endured so patiently the walls we’ve built, perhaps you’ll give the cities one more hour and grant the churches and cloisters two. And those that labor-maybe you’ll let their work grip them another five hours – or seven before you become forest again, and widening

Whole People / Whole Lives

The Uses of Sorrow | Mary Oliver (In my sleep I dreamed this poem) Someone I loved once gave me a box full of darkness. It took me years to understand that this, too, was a gift. One of the gifts of a long relationship, in this case I am thinking of my 24 years of

Poem for a Sunday Morning

Posted on the bulletin board above my desk are three poems I intend to memorize. The first among them follows here. Do yourself a favor and read it aloud. Once, at the dinner table with the family, I did exactly that and my young daughter broke into tears. The language is that precise and that

How Many Times Have You Died?

“I don’t know exactly what happened to me after that car accident when my blood pressure dropped precipitously low, and in the end, I realized that it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to solve it or explain it. Maybe I died, maybe I didn’t. I just don’t know. What I do know for sure is

Thank you, Mary Oliver

I am so thankful for the life and work of Mary Oliver and so sad to learn that she died on Thursday. Her poem, “The Journey” is the first thing I posted on this blog twelve years ago. Just yesterday, in an accidental feat of perfect timing, I published it again as the centerpiece of

Becoming a Person

I don’t want to start a philosophical or theological debate about this so let me offer a caveat at the outset: when I distinguish between a human being and a person I am distinguishing between the common accident of birth all Homo sapiens share and how some turn that accident into an intentional, conscious life. In my experience there

You Are Not a Falling Tree

Can you imagine being present on the day when a massive, shallow-rooted redwood tree came crashing to the earth, splintering into enormous jagged shards of timber? Can you imagine the sound, the grotesque violence, the shredding and grating of the collision as one falling tree snapped over the back of one that had previously fallen?