It’s so true that we learn by teaching, or even preparing to teach. Since I’ve said yes to leading a workshop on Simplicity and Transformation with my friend Hollister Knowlton, I’ve been noticing all the ways my own life could be simpler. It reminds me of Gandhi who realized he needed to give up sugar before he could, at a mother’s request, lecture a young man on the evils of sugar. Knowing that I’m going to be speaking on Simplicity in March is challenging me to remember all the things about simplicity that I’ve learned over the years and periodically forget.As Hollister and I began planning, I remembered a picture I drew in my journal several years ago. It was a depiction of me juggling [...]

I’ve been writing about discernment again, so I’m thinking a lot about how we know what God wants us to do. This always makes me more conscious of my own practice. I want to take time, listen inwardly, test what I’m hearing. I remember an older Quaker man who people said paused to discern before he did anything. Unfortunately this is hard to do when I’m faced with rapid fire choices from my preteen daughter: “Mom, can I have Heelies? I could use my own money.” “Mom, can I see Dreamgirls? All my friends have seen it and they say it’s only PG-13 because of one curse word.” “Mom, can we rent 13 Going on 30? Pleeeease!”My daughter is 10 going on 13, and the [...]

stunning Originally uploaded by spcoon. Here's a picture of the performance artists I described in yesterday's post. For more photos, go to this flickr page.

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 [...]