Some of you may find this hard to believe, but I’m going on a news fast—or at least a news diet. I just can’t take any more of the presidential campaign, Philadelphia’s murder rate, or the price of oil. I was feeling worn out by it all weeks ago, and kept tuning in to hear the latest anyway. But last weekend I lead a retreat on “Listening for God’s Voice” for a group of thirty Lutheran women at a beautiful retreat center near Reading. Although I enjoyed the whole weekend—especially the friendly people and the blooming trees—I especially appreciated the break from email and radio. On the drive home I resisted my usual impulse to turn on NPR and just enjoyed another hour of quiet. [...]

Two incidents this weekend left me feeling hopeful about racial reconciliation in Philadelphia, though both had sobering aspects as well.Saturday we attended a wonderful neighborhood event to reclaim a school mural that had been defaced by racist graffiti. The swastika, racial epithet, and death threat had been covered with grey paint as soon as parents and teachers discovered them on the way to school, but this "Unity" event covered the grey with something more hopeful: colored hand prints by all the people who attended, including students from the mostly black student body, families from the mostly white surrounding neighborhood, the new black mayor who won with an unprecedented and racially mixed majority, and the local white reverend who has been preaching about tolerance from her [...]

I haven’t had time to blog this week, but since a picture is worth the length of an average blog post, I’ll simply leave you with my favorite political cartoon of recent weeks by F/friend Signe Wilkinson. To protect artists, her cartoon network web site prevents copying, so please click on this link.

My first reaction to this New York Times article— “In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop—was to laugh. None of the Quaker or mother bloggers I know are making money cruising the web at all hours. For me blogging is often just a chance to express myself without worrying if my article length will fit an editor’s preference. But even if the problems the article describes are far removed from the lives of most bloggers, it still raises two serious issues that I can relate to—writers being underpaid and many people being over stressed.Stress has been a theme here lately, and I have to bring it up again to plug an excellent PBS series Unnatural Causes…is inequality making us sick?. The [...]

A recent Brain, Child debate has me thinking about the pros and cons of rewarding children. Instead of taking the magazine’s pro/con argument format, I want to make some distinctions about when I think rewards make sense and fit my Quaker values.Both Brain, Child writers acknowledge that life is not always fair or easy, and that children need to learn to deal with it. I agree, which is why I wouldn’t give my child a treat just for accepting a vaccine or some other discomfort, as one of the writers did. I may sound a little heartless, but I worry my children don’t have enough difficulties in their middle class lives and could do with a bit more character building. If they ever have to [...]

You’d think a week home with the kids wouldn’t be that stressful. Isn’t the purpose of spring break to give everyone a chance to sleep and hang out? It’s not working out that way, however, so I’m going to spend my one and a half hours of free time ranting, I mean reflecting, on why I feel so stressed out.Well, first of all there is the perennial problem that my teaching spring break does not line up with my children’s spring break, which means I have to scramble for child care for my teaching hours and spend less time preparing than I usually would. I’ve got that pretty well organized, though, so it’s not just that. There are two main problems: I miss having time [...]

This past weekend I got to go on a retreat with fifty-two other Quakers who identify themselves as having some sort of “ministry” or service they feel called to. It was wonderful to be away from daily responsibilities—no laundry, cooking, dishes, or email!—and wonderful to be with so many good people, talking about our spiritual lives. It was also fun to have the space to notice and appreciate serendipity, starting with Friday night.It was during the opening session that the power went off in the Catholic retreat center we were renting. The irony was that one of the presenters had written a piece ahead of time about how she tends to get overly anxious about leading retreats and compensates by preparing many handouts. In the [...]

To find out what these people are staring at, click on this amazing site by artist Chris Jordan. Someone just sent me the link, and after pouring over the pictures, I couldn't wait to post it.

Someone close to me has been very anxious lately, and it’s got me thinking about anxiety in general. My friend, psychologist and book author Tamar Chansky says that 1 out of 4 people in our culture suffers from anxiety, which might explain why ads like this one for Ativan have gotten so common. It makes one wonder why we seem more anxious than people in previous eras, who arguably had even fewer certainties in their lives. I remember wandering through the upstate Pennsylvania cemetery where my father is buried, reading the tombstones of families from the 1800s who lost children more frequently than I can imagine. Were mothers of that time constantly on edge for the next potential loss, or were they, as I imagine, [...]