“Everything can be taken from a [person] but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances . . . . Those who have a ‘why’ to live, can bear with almost any ‘how.'”
— Victor Frankl, Man’s Search for Meaning

Dear Generations X, Y, and Z:

On behalf of Baby Boomers everywhere, I offer a heartfelt apology for the planet we are leaving you. You were born on a distressed Earth in the throes of Global Warming and it’s not fair. Please forgive us for our part in this unprecedented catastrophe. Our generation failed to act on what we knew was coming; we preferred to live in denial with our 401(k) plans to think about.

Every generation has much to forgive of the preceding generation.  I was born in the throes of the Cold War with the shadow of “The Bomb” over my head. I would wake up with night terrors: Would I be turned into instant nothingness in a great mushroom cloud? My parents’ generation, when they were children, woke in the night fearing they would have no food because their burden was the Great Depression. It seems that every generation leaves behind a fearful burden, something children do not deserve, a terror that keeps them awake at night, afraid and angry. That’s because every generation is like every human being: noble but flawed, a thoroughly mixed bag. . . .

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So you must not be frightened . . . if a sadness rises up before you larger than any you have ever seen; if a restiveness, like light and cloud-shadows, passes over your hands and over all you do. You must think that something is happening with you, that life has not forgotten you, that it holds you in its hand; it will not let you fall.
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

A Word for Spring

I am standing in a crowd on a cool spring day, listening to the celebrated artist Edwina Sandys tell us the story about a fresh word — a bud of a word, a transforming word: a word made for Spring.

Edwina is the granddaughter of Sir Winston Churchill, that enormously important (and controversial) British leader, who was, above all, a man who knew his way around words. His gift with words helped him buoy up a beleaguered nation in the fight against Nazi Germany.

Edwina is telling us the story of how, as a child, her dear “grandpapa” once returned from a trip to America with a new and exciting word for his grandchildren.  . . . . . Click here to read this essay at Spirituality&Practice

On a soft, snowy morning I read a poem by Mary Oliver. And in the afternoon, it came to me, a notice of her death. Too soon! I thought. Too soon to lose a talent of this magnitude. My heart rocked in grief for several minutes. But then I re-read the poem from the morning called “Bazougey” (Dog Songs, 2013), about the death of a beloved dog. It begins,

Where goes he now, that dark little dog
who used to come down the road barking and shining?
He’s gone now, from the world of particulars, 
the singular, the visible. 

So, that deepest sting: sorrow. Still, 
is he gone from us entirely, or is he
a part of that other world, everywhere? 

I now think of Mary Oliver as in this poem, no longer part of the singular, the visible, the world of particulars, but rather “a part of that other world, everywhere.” . . . . read more