This year for Lent I let everything fall apart. Primarily, my belief that if I practiced some technique carefully and fervently enough, I would feel good. For the second year, I let my abstention from alcohol and chocolate go. I picked up meditating again for a while, and then I let that go, too. I […]
Read More Giving UpI don’t know what possessed me to watch the documentary “The Business of Being Born.” Several women give birth at home in this movie, and you see every detail of how it happens. I wondered– very theoretically since I currently am in no danger of giving birth– whether labor is more like getting a root […]
Read More Virgin BirthShe had a “spirit that crippled her,” a condition I think we’re all familiar with. Usually it shows up Monday morning. Sometimes on the weekend, too, though. She dragged herself down there, and she didn’t ask for help. She showed up. Jesus didn’t sit her down for six weeks of cognitive behavioral therapy, or serve her dinner and clean her house, or write her a check to pay her mortgage. He was just kind to her.
Read More She’s Come UndoneIt doesn’t matter how you treat a dead body. The dead wasp I vacuumed off my floor yesterday is just as dead as my great-grandfather– as far as science can tell us, anyway. Death means a lack of mattering. I appreciate how Buddhists try to get us comfortable with that, impossible as it may be. […]
Read More Borders
Going On 