Imperfect Serenity
I began this blog in 2005 while I was taking care of two young children and my dying mother, so the title, Imperfect Serenity, referred to my struggle to stay spiritually grounded during a difficult time. Eventually the title came to include my experiences in eco-justice activism, anti-racism work, and book publicity.
Outtakes
I didn’t blog while on a family vacation, and now that it’s my first work-day in over three weeks, I’m not sure where to start. I’m in a mood to tie up loose ends, cross things off my to-do list, and simplify. The Wisdom to Know the Difference is coming out in paperback in less than two months, and I’m trying to discern what I’m meant to do in terms of continued publicity, especially with limited work-time over the summer. I thought about taking a vacation from the blog (now over five years old), but my friend Lori Tharps gave me what seems like a fun alternative. She pointed out how people love to watch the deleted scenes after they’ve seen a movie and mentioned [...]
Work and Money
I have two schools of thought when it comes to work and money. One is that I am called to do certain work and how much money I make at it is irrelevant. I don’t buy the belief that our value equals our net worth. I don’t buy the belief that well-paid work is inherently more valuable than low-paid work or the common assumption in some circles that a good teacher is less talented and industrious than a CEO. By the end of my senior year of college, I was clear that money wasn’t my prime motivator, and I’ve been making unconventional career choices ever since that have brought me great satisfaction, though not great wealth. But lately I’ve been learning a different set of [...]
Technology and Simplicity
This morning as I was learning how to use my new iPhone at the Mac store, I got a call from my auto mechanic informing me that it would cost $7,400 to fix the broken monitor in my Prius. This has got me thinking about the pros and cons of possessing such fancy devices. I finally decided to get the iPhone when Mac announced a new generation of even more clever phones, which means that all the old ones are now on sale. Better yet, I discovered, they are selling refurbished models of old iPhones, so you can get a phone that could replace at least ten other gadgets for as low as $40 at Best Buy (not including service, of course). The fact that [...]
Your Best Life
Those who know of Joel Osteen may be surprised to hear that I’m reading his #1 New York Times bestseller Your Best Life Now and trying to figure out what speaks to me and what doesn’t. For those unfamiliar with the famous smile pictured here, Osteen is the pastor of Lakewood Church, said to be the largest and fastest growing church in the US with a weekly attendance around 38,000. An additional 20 million people per month view his weekly sermon on television, which is what publishers call “a platform,” the kind that helped his first book sell over 4 million copies. So, when I saw Your Best Life Now available for a quarter at a used book sale, I was curious. In some ways, [...]
Can We Trust Intuition?
I like observing the wild way my mind works. I’m a fascinating case—as are we all, I suspect. I’m especially interested in intuition, where it comes from, and whether we can trust it. Usually I do trust it, though that doesn't mean that things work out exactly as I expect. What got me thinking about this was the recent resolution of an intuition I had months ago when I first read about the Nautilus Book Awards in a writing newsletter. The thought immediately popped into my mind, “I’m going to win that thing.” I looked up the award—saw that is was for books that “promote spiritual growth, conscious living, and positive social change as they stimulate the imagination and inspire the reader to new possibilities [...]
Leaps of Faith
Photo of MOMIX performanceNothing gets me feeling inspired to be creative like graduation at University of the Arts, where I’ve taught part-time for the past ten years. Six-hundred students in fields ranging from painting to musical theatre and multimedia can exude a lot of energy, especially when they are fired up about graduating. Then there are the award-winning alumni, the proud faculty and parents, and the speeches on creativity. I left feeling like I had been given a much-needed injection of inspiration. Last year I wrote about President Sean Buffington’s talk on the importance of nerve. This year Buffington talked about the artist’s need and special ability to deal with uncertainty. The main commencement address was delivered by choreographer Moses Pendleton, who founded MOMIX dance [...]
Have Times Changed?
I’m reading Cosmopolitan and trashy relationship books at Borders again. It brings me back 17 years, when I was beginning research for my first book, Listen with Your Heart: Seeking the Sacred in Romantic Love, which critiques the manipulative dating advice aimed at women and offers a spiritual approach to relationships instead. The book has been out of print for a few years, so today I headed to Borders to start writing an updated proposal to get the book back into print. I wasn’t sure what I’d find. “What if the relationship books have gotten better?” I wondered. “Will I have to revise my assessment of popular culture?” No worries. The cover of this month’s Cosmo claims to tell us, “How to Get a Guy [...]
How to be a Quaker
Over on her blog What Canst Thou Say?, Robin M explains what she wants her children to learn in First Day School (which is Quakerspeak for Sunday school). While the post raises many important issues, the line that jumped out to me was this: “I want them to learn how to be a Quaker.” Given some things that happened this weekend, I’m wondering just what an education in “how to be a Quaker” might entail and if it’s really what I want for my children. First, I thought of my thirtieth Friends’ Central reunion this weekend, where I talked with another one of my classmates who became a Quaker as a result of attending a Quaker school. (Given that many people think of FCS as just [...]
To Life
Last Saturday I went to a Quaker memorial, and last night I went to a Bat Mitzvah. Although on the surface these two events might seem as different as possible, I was struck by their many similarities. First of all, I cried through both of them and needed to be passed tissue by someone sitting nearby. I was not alone in this for on both occasions there was a widespread feeling of hearts being full. There was also a sense of being connected in the Divine Presence, of being in sacred space. Although in both cases the hosting faith community had opened its arms to the wider community of people who loved its member, both were what Quakers would call a “gathered meeting.” Love [...]
Remembering Jim Cox
I’m wanting to write some profound and moving tribute to Jim Cox or at least capture the mood of his packed memorial yesterday afternoon, where people from all parts of his life rose and shared how the joy and love he expressed every day affected them—even (or especially) when he was dying of brain cancer. A member of our meeting said that Jim thought that once he was in the “other dimension” that he called heaven, he could help people with their dying, but she noted that he was already helping them with their living. As I think about that message, sitting at my computer on a Sunday morning, I realize that the best tribute I could give Jim would be to go make breakfast [...]
