Stories With Heart And Soul 
I met an angel on a summer morning. It’s a perfect memory. Some of us lick the edges of life while others live with a sore patch, constantly rubbing the wound, either keeping it fresh or making it fester. Most of us keep on like freight trains loaded with debris. I find relief and restoration
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Seeing the moon just before sunrise is a real treat. I’m used to communing with the sun, but this time of year the sun takes its time. Today I woke too early for my own good. When I ventured outside at 6:00am, I found the moon in the minutes before it trades places with the
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If you write you’ve heard, “Write what you know.” I know the sun is a healer. When it rises, I feel anointed and when it sets I’m blessed again. Every single morning, I sit on the west end of our loveseat like a lazy cat. Our condo faces north which freaked me out at first.
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My friend Betsy prays for prosperity every day. She asked me if I was trying to prosper through writing. I said “Yes,” like a reflex, because I knew she was talking about money. The truth is I don’t think about writing and money together. Instead, I focus on quiet and stillness and watching and listening.
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The sun is my best friend. I miss mornings in the window seat of our old kitchen where southern light bathed the room. Ceramic bowls shined like actors under stage lights and peaches glowed like deities. Living in a condo facing north now, planet earth kidnaps the sun in September and returns her in March. So
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This week, rain dripped from gutters with the steady pace of a metronome. It was soothing but also slightly sinister like the rhythm in an Alfred Hitchcock film just before the murder. Under the charcoal rubbed sky, trees were black and arthritic with branches bent in pain, and the grass was drowning. Far worse, the
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While I don’t believe in prescriptions for living, I do believe in the restorative ingredients in a calm atmosphere. I adore quiet spaces because they settle your mind and heart. We have several tranquil nooks in our house. I rotate around them and out to our garden. One of my best investments in calm is
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Have you ever thought about a bird losing its song? I haven’t. I assumed birds were born knowing how to sing. Then I read an article in the New York Times about the Regent Honeyeater, a critically endangered bird indigenous to Australia. There are now young Regent Honeyeaters who can’t sing because they have to
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This winter, our landscape transformed in unexpected and vexing ways. The biggest change was the moss and the English ivy. I noticed the ivy first and wondered how it slunk so far so fast. We’ve lived in our house for twenty-five years, that’s one hundred seasons of English ivy. It’s always been where it’s always
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It’s been a ying and yang year for my family, which means we’re lucky. On the plus side, we did a major house cleaning. Before the pandemic, I thought we had a pared down existence. It turns out that bags of do-we-really-need-this-stuff emerged from our basement and attic. We looped to and from Goodwill a
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