Confession: I have never studied economics—until now. E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973) ought to be a required text, not just for those studying economics, but for students of all disciplines, teachers, ecologists, politicians and policy makers, religious leaders, laypeople, and basically anyone who cares about humans and life on this… Continue reading OLD BOOKS, Part II: Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, by E. F. Schumacher
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OLD BOOKS, Part I: The Captive Mind, by Czeslaw Milosz
(Vintage, Reissue Edition, 1990) This book, written by Polish exile and poet Czeslaw Milosz in 1953, illustrates how the pressures of living in a totalitarian state cause people—even intelligent, thoughtful people—either to abandon their core beliefs and fall into line or to rebel (and therefore suffer and/or die in the state’s hands). Many who read… Continue reading OLD BOOKS, Part I: The Captive Mind, by Czeslaw Milosz
OLD BOOKS – Intro
I have something to say today in praise of old books. I’ll start with a lighter story of how I discovered my new favorite bookshop in the entire world. Then I’ll share, in a series of posts, a few of the important old books I’ve been reading this year, and why I feel they are… Continue reading OLD BOOKS – Intro
Do the Next Thing
And the heart does not die when one thinks it should We smile; there is tea and bread on the table. “Elegy for N.N.” Czeslaw Milosz (Selected Poems) For over a year now, my teenage daughter has been going through a complex chronic pain journey that has pummeled our family in myriad ways. My last… Continue reading Do the Next Thing
Crisis, Fatigue, Rilke, Prayer
When I go through a season of suffering or crisis, I am rarely able to write about it during or immediately afterward. It takes my soul and mind time to sift through it, to see what heals and how, what rises and what settles. And writing takes energy that is in short supply at such… Continue reading Crisis, Fatigue, Rilke, Prayer
Something Wildly More
One of my favorite writers, Marilynne Robinson, once said in an interview with Bill Moyers that human beings “exist wildly in excess of any sort of survival mode that could be posited for them.” She said that if you use animal behavior as a model or correlation to human behavior, “you’ve simply excluded everything that… Continue reading Something Wildly More
Piles (or What I’m Reading)
I don’t know many writers who only read one book at a time. (If you are one who does, I’d be fascinated to make your acquaintance and would try to question you about the reasoning behind your reading practice without making you feel as if you were a specimen under a microscope.) I have piles,… Continue reading Piles (or What I’m Reading)
Adeste Fidelis
Many of us are closing down 2016 with a keen awareness of the darkness all around us in the world today—a bitter and divisive election that exposed a great deal of ugliness in our nation and perhaps even in ourselves; world events that stagger us in their brutality even as we want to look away—Aleppo,… Continue reading Adeste Fidelis
The Truest Thing I Know
By my desk, there is written on a green index card this quote that I see every day as I sit down to write: “Say the truest thing you know, line by line.” In Writing I read it in a guide to writing poetry by Suzanne U. Rhodes, The Roar on the Other Side. My… Continue reading The Truest Thing I Know
I Didn’t Want To Be That White Woman
They saw me leave the house. The two boys looked to be about fourteen years old. They had already passed my house and were walking down the middle of the street as I climbed into my car to pick up my kids from school. Something inside told me to wait a few minutes and watch.… Continue reading I Didn’t Want To Be That White Woman