Category: The Daily Sip

mistakes

Sometimes things just do not turn out the way we had planned, or even dared to hope. The often-quoted phrase “Compare and despair.” is a valuable reminder to me that when I compare myself and my life to others, despair is usually the only result.  Needless suffering.  The thought-version of...

Warmth

Kai-the-dog and I have turned off our TV and stored it. The evening news is too hard to hear and I can get what I need from NPR on the way to work. Now, the light in our home is no longer blue, it is orange, gentle, soft. Kai-the-dog likes...

Beauty’s becoming – a meditation on gain and loss

Whidbey Island Late-summer Tomatoes Our culture confuses beauty and glamor. They are different. Glamor sells, whereas beauty inspires.  Britney Spears may sell but Vanessa Redgrave inspires. Glamor is flawless whereas beauty can be centered in the very flaws of a thing, of a person, of a situation, of a life....

The shell and the red balloon

Shahnit's Shell When I moved to an island in the Salish Sea, a friend gave me some shells he had found on a beach one day.  We agreed that I would spend some time with them and, in time, find some shells and agate stones here on this island, and...

Tenacity and Gratitude

The meditation loft over the study at Edgecliff House on Whidbey Island Way up above my study is a meditation loft. There are pillows and an electric tea kettle.  A hexagonal window looks out to the ocean off the cliff on which I live and so my pillow faces out...

Letting Go

NanNan's Letter Folder, later embossed with my name at ordination. I clutter my home with love.  Well, things really.  But they are icons of love – hard to let go of and yet...it is time to simplify.  It is time “to small” my life.  Small should be a verb. These...

To Delight (verb)

Kai emerges with delight after a swim in Useless bay. The thirteenth-century word “delight” comes from its Latin root, “delectare” which not only refers to pleasure and to that which brings pleasure, but also to arousal, seduction, and allure.  Delight is not just a clown or a Santa Clause…it can...

Sorrow and Joy

Some of my Tea Bowls. Setting Moon Pottery. Charles LaFond, potter. Number 1 when I was 18 - my first pot. Number 25 was fired recently. A life of bowls. “Your joy is your sorrow unmasked. And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your...

Exhaling

Sorting things When we breathe, we inhale and then we exhale.  For those of us whose childhoods were particularly difficult or who have survived trauma, the breath is shallow, tentative, furtive, and so, rather more frequent. For most people however the breath is deep and subconscious.  In - belly swells. ...

Pathways in rainforests

So many tomes have been written about the Dark Night of the Soul.  Indeed the title of the great mystic was mistranslated.  The original translation was “the obscured night of the soul.” The word “dark” gets a bad rap. “Dark woods” are frightening.  “Dark Knight” is a medieval bad guy. “Dark thoughts” are...