For some time I’ve been meaning to blog about trying to be an environmentally-conscious family, so I was pleased when The New York Times published “For EcoMoms, Saving Earth Begins at Home.” In many ways, the article itself points to the contradictions and challenges of trying to live simply in the United States.First, the good news: an increasing number of mothers (as well as fathers and non-parents, in my observation) are talking with each other about how to reduce their impact on the environment. I was heartened to read that in California, mothers are doing this in groups—and not just Quaker committees. The article describes the EcoMom party as the new Tupperware party, a chance for women to gather and talk over a glass of [...]

Nature often gives us spiritual lessons. Last Sunday in meeting someone spoke about the hope she sensed from seeing the sprouting crocuses and blooming witch hazel on her way through the garden. Certainly spring is the season of hope and new life. Falling leaves always remind me of the cyclical nature of things, the need for times of retraction as well as expansion. So today it is slippery out—the sidewalks coated with sleet, snow, and rain—and it seems a fitting reminder of how precarious our walk on this earth is.I have a good friend whose mother is dying. Four times now the doctors have told her the end was near, only to have her mother rebound. Talking to her reminds me of those unpredictable days [...]

I’ve been dreaming about my mother lately, or sometimes about being in her old apartment. In the most dramatic dream I was sitting on her old couch (the one which my grandfather died on) when my mother walked into her living room. I jumped up to greet her, but she evaporated under the white robe she was wearing, sort of like the witch in The Wizard of Oz. In the dream I thought, “At least I still have her couch,” though in waking life I do not. As longtime readers will remember, my mother died just over two years ago. Her couch was one of her many possessions that I gave away because I didn’t have room to keep it, and it wasn’t valuable to [...]

A writer friend of mine, who is also a very spiritual person, says that whenever life seems to be getting in the way of your writing, consider the possibility that the distractions are there to teach you something you need to learn in order to do the writing. I’m trying to remember that after a week when I didn’t get to write anything, not even blog. Looking back at the events of the week, I can see ways that my friend is right.For instance, last night we had dinner with a troubled young woman whom I would like to “fix,” though I know I can’t. I can’t undo her rough childhood, her exposure to drugs and alcohol at an early age, or the genes she [...]

Many years ago I was in the Peace Corps in Botswana, where most people speak Setswana, which I learned better than most Whites, but not fluently. Because I spoke some Setswana, people sometimes assumed that I knew more than I actually did. I remember once when I stopped by the shop near my little round house. One of the women behind the counter told me something in Setswana, and I had to answer, “Ga ke utlwe”—I don’t understand. The woman repeated herself, more loudly this time, but my response was the same. This went on until I felt she was shouting at me, and we were both frustrated. I finally left the store, still not knowing what seemed so urgent to the disappointed woman.The problem [...]

I’ve been thinking about a comment from two posts ago about trusting the discernment of our children. It seems to bring together two huge and difficult questions: How do we know if someone else is truly listening to God’s guidance? And how do we prepare our children to be adults?On the first question, it’s hard enough to know if we are really being faithful ourselves; it is so easy to frame our own desires in the language of leading. Early Friends were suspicious of their own desires—to the extreme perhaps, living as they were at a time when anything “natural” seemed suspect—but we’ve gone the other way. We consider our own desires something to pay attention to when discerning God’s leading, which in general, I [...]

It’s a new year, and I have a new haircut, which makes me feel a little lighter. But the real reason I am brimming with hope this morning is that Barack Obama won in Iowa with record turn out, especially among young and new voters. The fact that his victory was sound in a state that is 95 per cent White only adds to my optimism about his prospects in the rest of the country. (For why I am now capitalizing White and Black, read this post.)Of course Obama’s victory does not mean that racism is a thing of the past, or that the great disparities in wealth and power than exist in our country will disappear if we elect a Black president. It is [...]

So the good news is that I’ve done of a great job of empowering my daughter to know what she wants and to ask for it. This was one of my goals as the mother of a daughter, and I’ve apparently accomplished it before her eleventh birthday. The bad news is that she is honing her skills negotiating with me, and she’s better at it than I am.The issue of the day is still her Christmas gift. She’s given up on the iPhone, but has gotten stuck on the iPod nano. Everyday she brings it up and presents cogent counter-arguments to the reasons we’ve told her we’re not buying her one. To my concern that it will separate her from the family and to her [...]

A few days ago a friend who works with low-income students told me that one of her students was sharing Ramen noodles with his siblings this month so that their family could afford Christmas. It was my friend’s impression that they might be saving, not just for a simple gift, but for some higher status electronic item.This story reminded me of my mother, who always said that Santa was a cruel story to tell poor children. She and my father went bankrupt when I was a baby, so they couldn’t afford nearly as many gifts as the cousins whom we usually visited for Christmas dinner. My mother didn’t want me to believe that I was naughty and they were nice just because I got fewer [...]

On a whim this morning I did a Google blog search for “God” and got over 30 million hits. The top results reveal our culture’s conflicted views on the Creator, though I’m not sure they would help a person who was genuinely searching for God. First I clicked on All About God and was greeted with the message, “We have all sinned and deserve God’s judgment.” It’s a well organized, conservative site that attempts to answer serious questions like, “Does God exist?” and “Is the Bible true?” though if I were designing a site to tell people about God, judgment would not be the first thing I’d mention. I started wondering if a more loving image of the Divine was in the top Google results [...]