For those of you who missed the ten seconds of television coverage that Saturday’s national peace march in Washington received, or for those who read the New York Times version, I’d like to give my own account. For starters, I wouldn’t say there were “tens of thousands” of marchers, as the papers reported. There were hundreds of thousands—300,000 according to the organizers. I have no idea how they figure that out, but I do know that 11 buses came just from our end of Philadelphia, 3 from our Quaker meeting alone. (For the 2000 Million Mom March, our meeting only sent 1 bus.) It was clear that we were not just turning out the usual crowd, as most of the recent peace marches have. This [...]

This morning I tried to do yoga in the living room while the puppy nuzzled my feet. He thought downward dog was an invitation to lick my hair. When I got down on the floor completely, he thought it was an invitation to pounce. It seemed a fitting way to start the day. “Imperfect Serenity” is an apt description of my current mood.I’d been humming along on my new book until last night when a friend’s comments spun me into a little crisis of self-doubt. It’s my own fault, asking for feedback after only two chapters, though it’s probably good to face the hard questions now, rather than after six or seven chapters. The question I’m asking this morning is how to tell the difference [...]

We’ve just come home from the Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service at our school. As usual, we’re a bit sweaty and full of carbohydrates. Also as usual I have some mixed feelings about this “day of service” stuff. On the positive side, the day brings together volunteers of various ages and races and connects our school to the wider community. We also do work that’s actually helpful to people, from donating blood to packing up school supplies for children who can’t afford them. There’s an overall good feeling that I really treasure. But there’s also part of me that regrets that King is celebrated with service, rather than justice. The spiritual and political heart of his message only gets a few minutes notice [...]

I’ve neglected this blog for three weeks, partly because I’m trying to discern where to go next with it. I’m feeling renewed energy to work on the Wisdom to Know the Difference book, exploring the last line of the Serenity Prayer and how we know the difference between what we should accept and what we should try to change. Since I’m not teaching this term, it would be exciting to just totally focus on the book, without worrying about whether I’ve posted once a week. What I’m thinking is that I’ll just post as I feel led (as Quakers say), without predicting how often that will be. For those of you who like reading my posts, I’d appreciate it if you’d sign up for RSS [...]

It’s my last writing day before school closes for break, so I’m trying to tie up the Christmas packages and the loose ends. We’re on the third candle of the advent wreath, the pink one, which means Christmas is around the bend. My husband Tom says the pink is for joy, though I heard a different interpretation in a message in Quaker meeting this Sunday.According to the message (if I remember correctly), the first candle is for hope, and that candle is watched over by an angel. The second is for love, and that one is watched over by Mary. And the third candle is for trust, and that candle is watched over by Joseph. The speaker never got to the fourth candle because the [...]

“I hate time,” said Megan this morning. I knew immediately why. She has to wait eight more days until her tenth birthday. She can’t wait to hit the double digits.Getting older has its advantages, I realize. Eight days no longer feels like an eternity. Ten years is a chapter, not the whole book. Still, Megan’s tenth birthday marks two anniversaries—the span of her life and my journey as a mother—so, it seems as good a time as any to reflect on what I’ve learnt so far. Yesterday made me admit that I’ve improved at patience and letting go, though this is more a reflection on how ungracious I was during the baby and toddler years than on my current enlightenment. When my children were younger, [...]

The neighbors have their lights up, B101 is playing all Christmas music, and I’ve begun my annual wrestling match with what is supposedly the “Hap-happiest time of the year.”Part of it is my ongoing struggle against consumerism—a regular theme in this blog—as well as my issues with being a cultural minority. My particular questions of the day: What does it mean to celebrate advent? And what does it mean to honor religious diversity in a culture that commercializes everything?Traditionally, advent was the season of waiting. It was a dark quiet time of inward preparation, or at least that’s my ideal. Gradually the candles on the advent calendar increased, and then on Christmas day (or Christmas Eve, depending on your family), the tree appeared, blazing with [...]

We’re a few years behind the curve, but my children and I have gotten hooked by the Harry Potter series. We read a bit every night before bed, an exercise that I believe is good for family togetherness as well as vocabularies, though as we move through the series, I’m beginning to wonder how much violence and “snogging” (as Ginny calls kissing in book six) is appropriate for a seven- and nine-year-old. Compared to much of what’s in our culture, it’s pretty tame. Still, it raises the continual questions about how to draw our family’s boundaries. My children have already heard from friends that Sirius gets killed in book five and Dumbledore in book six. Is there any reason not to let them enjoy good [...]

I’m on my way to the airport, like millions of other Americans, so this won’t be one of those coherent essay-like blog posts that takes a theme through a series of points and ends neatly with some clever reference to the introduction. Instead this will be a few random queries by a Thanksgiving traveler.First: Megan, Luke and Tom actually flew two days ago, and I had the weird experience of seeing them off at the airport. One of the weirdest parts was having to explain to Megan why she shouldn’t bring her four tubes of lip gloss in her carry on bag. I really couldn’t explain why lip gloss was a public safety hazard, and the woman at airport security didn’t explain it either when [...]

After my doctor’s appointment this morning, I had a while to wait for the next train, so I stopped into the farmer’s market at Reading Terminal. It was nice to get there before lunch, before crowds of downtown workers lined up at stalls selling every kind of food, from Malaysian curry and cheese steaks to turkey shaped chocolates and beet juice shakes. I went in for bananas and wandered around a bit before heading toward the train station across the street. Then, out on the sidewalk, I met Helen.“Hey, Honey, could you buy me a sandwich?” she called. I glanced at my watch and saw I had plenty of time before my train. No excuse there. My other excuse, that I don’t like to give [...]