Winter 2021

FEAR AND FATIGUE What a time we have all been having! What a challenging, difficult, demanding year! As if the pandemic were not enough, we’ve suffered through some of the worst fires in history in the West, and pummeling, unremitting hurricanes in the South and East. With all of this fatigue, and all of these…

My One Companion is … darkness. We want joy, peace, happiness. But when these are unattainable, is it possible to make darkness, sadness, grief our companions? Summer 2019 Newsletter in PDF format (1.3MB)

A classic Maine nor’easter is blowing outside my window and the snow is falling so rapidly that it’s hard to see across the blueberry field. It’s March 1, and until now the winter has been so mild that it seemed the days would continue to roll calmly onwards into April. The crocus are up, the…

CHANGE “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” runs an old folk wisdom saying. This saying has never seemed so profoundly true as today. So many things change today: a new president in the White House, the seasons, the death of Pope Francis, and the new pope, Leo XIV. Is there anything…

SPEAKING Recently I have become more and more aware of how unaware I am of how I speak, my tone of voice, my facial expressions, sometimes even my choice of words. It is a great gift to become aware in this way, though a humbling gift. I am realizing how much my tone of voice…

PRAYING Perhaps most of us learned as children to pray by way of the Our Father or Hail Mary or the Rosary, or the Divine Mercy chaplet. We were taught that this was how to pray. Perhaps we never were taught, never learned, anything beyond that—yet now that is not enough. Winter 2022 Newsletter PDF