I lived in Georgia from 1990 through 1993. Each New Year's Day, I rode on horseback in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains, four hours north. My chosen steed was a chocolate bay Arabian mare named Ariane. Her regal head was sculpted and massive, her every gait supple and smooth. A few years earlier, she was […]

When I stand in a river, I can feel the current's force. It takes will to remain standing. I widen my base and adjust my footing. I engage my core. I meet the resistance. The onrushing water must account for me. Then something truly magical happens. I change the river's shape. I find my equilibrium, […]

This dog. My stepmother died August 1, 2012. I returned to Florida for the interment of her ashes October 19, and my 84 year-old father announced he wanted to get married again. I gently suggested he wait, and try to get his sea legs back under him. Not make consequential decisions from the standpoint of […]

RIP Seamus. 12/30/08 - 12/02/22 Even if it hurts, get up every day and move. Don’t forget to stop and smell whatever is interesting.  When you’re going up a hill, you can get tired. It’s OK to zigzag, explore side to side, and catch your breath.  If you forget where you are, it’s OK to […]

Instead of trying to fill it with words, I listened. So nothing outside me can determine what enough is? Silence. Only me? Silence. Then why is there a “world” at all? Silence again. Is anyone listening? All my life, whenever I was met with silence, I always assumed I was being ignored. Or that something […]

For decades, I tried to prove to the world I wasn’t just enough, I was more than enough. There were a few problems with this approach. First, “the world” is a vague notion. The world is different for each of us. And once again, my aim wasn't true. The scale of my endeavor was all […]

After all, I was the guy who stayed up all night before a paper was due the next day, and still got an A. Zorro with a capital Z, written across the sky by a daredevil pilot. By contrast, my friend in the apartment across the hall chipped away at her work and finished at […]

If what I wanted stayed just out of reach, I never risked not achieving it. I never had to fail. The love of God, the blessing of my life, my dreams - they all felt beyond me. So I kept them out of reach, and instead sought comfort in my visions of brilliant potential. That […]

Survivorship bias is an error in logic. We make this error when we emphasize whatever "survives" a selection process. So we overlook whatever did not survive, because it's no longer visible. How often do we discount, or even conceal our mistakes because of how they made us look? How often do we discard rough drafts, […]

Someone dear to me died at 3:10AM on Saturday, July 17, 2021. She was also one of an estimated 178,000 people who died on earth that same day.* By that measure, some 7400 people died in the same hour, and 120 within the same minute. One other person on earth died the very second she […]

Our death and we are promised Our lives a dowry  Where we give everything To become nothing   Our kingdom’s past knowing And before believing Where now is always then And never becoming   We reign in wind Emperors of air Our just deserts Are ever becoming   Full into empty becomes full All into […]

We all have the power to transcend our circumstances, and become our sovereign selves. He wanted us to know that. When the Buddha said “The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart,” he was encouraging us to see that there is nothing outside us worthy of understanding. The lesson - […]

I could not sit still, nor keep my mouth shut or my hands to myself for any sustained length of time. I fought naps. Someone recommended medication.  In 1968, pharmaceutical protocols for ADHD were new, and my mom did not want to medicate me. Instead, she sent me to a special-needs summer camp, but she […]

 I was raised to walk a path of salvation. As a result, my worth became a status I had to earn. So I threw myself into worth-earning, and became a consummate self-improver.  There was a consequence, though. I learned to see myself as inherently wrong.  If I could just fix myself, I’d be OK. I […]

For example: “The universe is clearly telling me something here.” “We’ll see what the universe wants.” “I offered it up to the universe.” There’s no question it can get lonely out there, but when did the universe become “the other?”  That’s a pretty neat trick. This all-knowing “other” is the answer to all our questions, […]

Her skin is honey almond, her face gold filigree, and her voice has a soft assurance that reaches the furthest corners of our house. On her brow sits a globe like a third-eye chakra, etched with the words “tempus fugit.” Those words and her rhythmic, insistent chime remind me to account for my allotted time.  […]

1.     What I am does not depend on anything I want.  2.     Nothing I acquire will change me, because what I am is unconditional. 3.     Whatever I become will always start and end with what I am.  Before I learned this, I spent years pursuing one of two objectives: To make myself look more like the world, or […]

…means first being intimate with me.  Being intimate with me means acknowledging – first – that I want me more than I want you. More than I want anything. I failed in relationships because I tied my value to one of two things – me proving my worth to you, or you proving my worth […]

After years of searching for evidence of me out in the world and in everyone else I met, it occurred to me that maybe I’d been looking in the wrong place.  At that critical moment, life sent me a teacher. He suggested I consider one simple fact. If I was the one doing the searching, […]

1.     There is nothing special about me. 

2.     Any belief that I am special means I still need to prove my worth to an imagined audience.

3.     I have nothing for the world that does not already exist. 

To laugh is to risk appearing a fool

To weep is to risk appearing sentimental

To reach out to another is to risk involvement

1. Be you. Everyone else is taken.

2. Growth can be uncomfortable. Whenever it is, know you’re getting stronger.

3. When you’re growing and it gets uncomfortable, sometimes your best effort isn’t possible. Even second-best efforts count.

The temperature notched a hundred and two degrees in Archer City, Texas, and its lonesome ghost was restless again. Her hundred-year vigil finally convinced Lottie Belinda Gibbs that her little life had been visible only to God, and her simmering rage cooked the air in town to a turn. She'd only ever left town twice […]

Magical Sedona, Arizona was named for the wife of its first postmaster, T.C. Schnebly. Apparently the original names he’d submitted, “Oak Creek Crossing,” then “Schnebly Station” were both rejected by the Postmaster General because they were too long to fit in the cancel stamp. Someone suggested he name it after his wife. Sedona Arabella Miller […]

My first step out every day, I put my hand on a heart and open the front gate of a bungalow in Armory Park, one of Tucson, Arizona’s urban neighborhoods. Back in the day, Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific) Railroad housed its employees here, and each night, freight trains call from the tracks running a […]