To read my new posts, head over to: https://markliebenow.blogspot.com ..read more

 I am thrilled to have two essays published recently. Both of them are about grieving someone you love and trying to make sense of the world without them in it. “Speaking of That … which we weren’t” was published in the Chautauqua Literary Journal. This is a print-only journal, so you can’t read it online. But “Fragile, Fracture, Fear” is online. It was published by Cleaver Magazine, and this is the link: https://www.cleavermagazine.com/fragile-by-mark-liebenow/ gratefully, Mark ..read more

           I don’t know how to pray. I only know to sit in a quiet place and listen.  - Mark ..read more

              Find a bench where you can pause your busyness ..read more

 In the morning, before you begin your activities, find a quiet place where you can listen to the day opening up.  ..read more

Simplify your life.  Listen. Take care of others. Mark ..read more

  Come to the dinner table where you have a place among others who have cancer or are grieving the loss of someone they love. Dine with those who are living with uncertainties and fears. They understand what you are feeling. Here you do not have to explain.As we eat a meal together, we share our stories of being shattered and lost, the nearness of death, the dislocation that a cancer or any serious diagnosis brings. We talk about the stillness of our days and the long drift of the hours of night.  If you are currently in the hospital and your table is a tray, take time to fellowshi ..read more

 (I posted this last year. I still like it.) It’s late December and the woods are quiet.  I stand in my backyard lost in the mystery of trees. Two squirrels chase each other through the snow and deepening shadows. I listen to trees creak in the breeze, and hear the soft click-click-click of empty sunflower shells land on each other, dropped by wrens and finches at the feeder. The magenta of sunset flows across the sky, then shifts to rose.  People around my neighborhood have placed electric candles in their windows and draped garlands of lights over their bushes and along thei ..read more

  The holiday season is a time of renewing our faith in people and in matters unseen, scraping together enough hope to get us through the coming year. But for those who lost loved ones this year, it will be a blue Christmas, a blue Hannukah.  Even in the best of times, the holidays leave most of us exhausted and wondering if they are worth all the effort. The endless shopping, baking, and gathering with gaggles of family and pods of friends will deposit us on January 2nd feeling fragmented and weary. We will wonder if we feel any happier, wiser, or more grounded, and we’ll think a ..read more

 When we are living with great heartache, it’s difficult to imagine ever feeling happy again. Suffering takes our life over, and we’re tempted to wrap it around like a blanket to protect us from being hurt even more. This passage in Psalm 126 (echoed in Matthew 21) speaks of two realities of life: sorrow and hope. Someone is weeping, yet they go out to plant a new crop so that people will have something to eat in the future.  We do not get over our losses by dwelling on them. We don’t get over our tragedies by ignoring them or saying that they don’t matter. They do matter because t ..read more