When I was 16, I got a chair for my birthday. It was a little wicker chair from Pier 1. Nothing about it seems unusual to me now except that I asked for it. Who asks for a chair for their birthday? Perhaps I was trying to piece together a different kind of life than the one I had. My room was already too small for the furniture in it. You had to walk sideways to squeeze between the bed and bureau. Maybe I used that chair to hold clothes or homework. I can’t remember much about it, except that it was mine, and that mattered to me then. I took the chair with me into all the places I lived over ..read more

I don’t know what might have caused my sister and me to be riding in the back of our ’57 Chevrolet, the light green sedan that my dad would drive for many more years. I don’t know how or where we found ourselves motoring slowly through a flooded street, water lapping in waves, into the dark ahead. I was afraid, that much I remember. We pulled into a gas station. Was it so my dad could call my mom on the pay phone? We would be late. She would be worried. Was it to buy cigarettes or a beer? To ask for directions? Were we lost? Were we stuck? Would we make it? We didn’t say any of these things o ..read more

Women’s stories are hard to believe. And they are hard to tell. They don’t fit the narrative, someone will tell you. They are called exaggerated, overemotional, irrational, and unbelievable. Women’s stories are often horror stories. They terrify us because we realize how vulnerable and powerless women are. The other day I watched the documentary American Nightmare on TV. It was a story you couldn’t turn away from, although many had. A man and woman are attacked in their bed in the middle of the night by a masked intruder. The man is knocked out while the woman is drugged and kidnapped. She sp ..read more

The other week I went to my bank’s ATM to make a withdrawal and it wasn’t working. I turned around and left to try again the next day. When I came back, the ATM still wasn’t working. It felt kind of weird, but I went inside the bank. I mean, who goes inside a bank anymore? For that matter, who needs cash? Just the people who do things like me, I suppose. There was only one person inside, a teller. There were empty desks and chairs where you might have sat if you’d been opening an account, applying for a loan, or purchasing a CD in the old days, but this one fellow was it. He was the whole ban ..read more

The other day I drove down the hill and into a fog bank. A fog bank, yes, out of the blue. The weather is so odd around here — cloudy, gray, foggy— ­strange for September, which has always been our hottest month of the year. But that was then. Just about all weather is strange these days, but ours is a stranger-than-ever world. It’s hard most days to lift one’s sights above the gloomy prospects. It makes me think of this photo. It was taken at a children’s playground where underground misters emit a continuous flow of fog. It’s an ingenious form of play, and the kids can’t get enough of it. W ..read more

Many years ago, when my life seemed to take a radical and inexplicable turn, people would sometimes ask how I decided to make that happen. The truth is, I didn’t make anything happen except in the smallest ways. I didn’t decide to downsize, for instance, although it looked that way. I didn’t become a minimalist, although my needs diminished. I didn’t decide to pursue a spiritual path, I just put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t resist, reject, or refuse anything, I simply made different choices. They are the kind of choices we are presented with all the time. Instead of more I cho ..read more

You should entreat trees and rocks to preach the Dharma, and you should ask rice fields and gardens for the truth. Ask pillars for the Dharma, and learn from hedges and walls. In earth, stones, sand, and pebbles, there is to be found the extremely inconceivable mind which moves the sincere heart. — Dogen More than 800 years ago, Dogen Zenji, the founder of the Soto school of Zen, was struggling to establish an authentic monastic practice in Japan. He had attracted his first students to a small temple where they lived communally, sharing responsibilities. When he was a young monk, he thought t ..read more

You should entreat trees and rocks to preach the Dharma, and you should ask rice fields and gardens for the truth. Ask pillars for the Dharma, and learn from hedges and walls. In earth, stones, sand, and pebbles, there is to be found the extremely inconceivable mind which moves the sincere heart. — Dogen Zenji June 22-25, 2023 The Pines Retreat A weekend of Zen meditation on a 60-acre wooded estate located one hour southeast of Toledo. Experience the healing presence of sitting in silence or walking in meditation, chanting, Dharma talks and private encounters with a teacher. Our Lady of the P ..read more

Midnight on the lake No wind, no waves the empty boat is flooded with moonlight. —Dogen Zenji It has been quiet over here for a long time. There is great comfort in deep silence amid the cries of our suffering world. Silence doesn’t have a meaning but we often project a meaning onto it. We might think, for instance, that silence implies anger, offense, or indifference, but that is not always true. What is true is that silence and stillness abide eternally in our very being, when the winds of emotion have calmed and the waves of thought have ceased. Then we might have something useful to say ..read more

If you don’t see the Way, you don’t see it even as you walk on it. The other day I had a letter from a longtime friend. “I keep in touch with you through your blog,” she wrote. I felt guilty, because if my writing is a way to keep in touch with friends, I’m not a very good friend. I don’t write much anymore, least of all here. Not sure why, except fewer topics occupy my mind.  Still, that’s no reason to keep my distance. Hello, Leslie! Someone asked me a while back if I was now “bicoastal.” That’s  because I seem to be taking a lot of trips back east to visit my daughter in New York ..read more