just enough light

I’m reading Natalie Goldberg’s The Great Failure this morning. She wrote of her Zen master’s words, “My job is to make you dumb.” She went on to write that “dumb” was a compliment in Zen. “It meant you weren’t running ahead of yourself, planning, organizing, strategizing. You were open to receive the world as it […]

More about legitimate suffering and needless suffering. Almost all of my misery is needless. That is, it’s mostly contrived, based on my assumptions about what should or should not be happening. By misery, I mean anger, frustration, boredom, restlessness, worry, angst, and all the other emotional states that make my days longer and probably shorten […]

I do not play chess. I’m not a quilter. I’m not a bird-watcher nor do I collect spoons from different states. Yet, I know people who do these things. And they do them passionately. I often wonder, how? Why? These activities seem uninteresting, even boring to me. Lenten disciplines remind me that any activity done […]

“Do what you are doing.”This is a lesson I have learned and relearned hundreds of times over the past four decades. “Do what you are doing” is one of the lessons from Hugh Prather’s Notes to Myself, given to me in 1975 by my dear friend, Carolyn. Writing about Lenten disciplines yesterday prompted me to […]

Growing up Southern Baptist, I was not exposed to Lent. I heard people talk about giving things up for Lent, but it was usually a joke, promising to give up things they had no intention of doing anyway. It was not until seminary that I attended a church that took Lent seriously. And it was […]

From the time I was 11 until I was 16, my family lived in a house that had a small creek that ran along the back of the yard. It was just a tiny little creek that in most places you could just step over it. During the East Texas spring we had plenty of […]

When I was very young, I was terrified of getting a shot. I don’t know where that came from. It might have been as simple as hearing one of my parents say, “I hope this won’t hurt much.” All I know is that whenever I was to get a shot, I threw a screaming, thrashing […]

I felt restless yesterday. I paced around, my mind jumped around, I expended a lot of energy being busy but not being focused. It was not until this morning that I sat still long enough to pay attention. I had judged those thoughts and feelings yesterday as “bad.” I paced around thinking I should do […]

We label things out of necessity. How difficult daily life would be without labels for things and experiences. “I’m going to pick up this object that has a substance for cleaning my teeth and I’m going to squeeze it onto this other object with bristles…” We need labels to make our lives manageable. But labels […]

When Jesus admonished his followers to not judge, lest you also be judged, I always assumed that was just about not judging people. The short version is, “Don’t call someone an idiot. That’s a judgment.” Of course, I would often then mutter to myself, “No, it’s just telling the truth. “ OK, maybe it was […]