ancient pieces float to mind presenting  impulses prompting the pilgrim to look toward home time chastens the victor and yields the victory to her who supposes life everlasting she has won the medal and still covets awards to hang on the wall but they all hang on her heart. photo by Joshua Hallissey

Fairy Dust Will the children find how shaky all things are and the gods who are their parents, all illusion? What will I say then? “All of it, my dears,  all of it is nothing but fairy dust created by a head in search of its own dream.” Where would I be then? In the…

How much better it would be for this noble planet if we cherished her like a lover? Or loved her as a mother who adored her child and wiped the tears away with a soft linen? Or as a father whose arms surrounding the child are as steel beams supporting the frame of the tallest…

August 13, 1990 I write and say. . . . . . It is necessary for me to ask why; otherwise the peeling of my heart has no purpose. Why implies a reason, doesn’t it? So don’t start by saying it is not enough just to live and breathe and see and feel the anguish…

When at the end of the dog days of the Lion and the garden is again conducive to prayer, arrange the knees bent in homage to the winter. It is time to pray the garden into being; the stage for the winter solstice. It is time to oil the tools to store in barns designed…

The words we chose to speak could not be construed to be words of great love, but they were. It was with gaiety that we chatted about the commonplace and laughed a lot. We were happy. I sat in my chair at the dining room table and watched with joy a moment rare in our…

I sought my God in pleasures great and small. In beautiful places one was told, He would be found. I have traveled much this world to know if God be found across the sea, in foreign lands, I had to seek. The Roman soil was holy, surely He would be there! Though history stirred my…

Take ye  and do likewise He said and I believed Him. When effort becomes the way and in a blink of an eye, becomes a pleasure, nay fun, one becomes suspect. For in layman’s terms work is not pleasure but desultory means of making a living. Woe is the pilgrim who in life respects the…

This morning I took spade in hand and dug the young and fragile marigolds out of their crowded rows and thinned them out. With dowel in hand I lifted these slender stems into holes I designed for them. I eased their change in residence under a cloudy sky promising rain.  It did. And their trauma…

Conscience is a mouth guard I wear to keep my heart from spilling onto the cold, hard ground. I would want my words to meet your thoughts, to brighten your furrowed brow and dismiss the fear from your eyes. But only when I see an invitation to speak will I let loose the guard. This…