Daily Write

A Life of Gratitude

First and foremost, the transition into awareness each morning. The knowing that I am breathing and alive. And that when my eyes open, I can still see. Blurry though it may be some days. That next to me is my amazing wife and that we are waking into a life we have dedicated ourselves to building together. For the morning flurry on workdays because we each have work to get to and enjoy spending our…

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Daily Write

A Super Ticklish Live Wire

I’ve known that anxiety was a foreign feeling to my wife for quite some time. I remember the incredulity I felt when she first told me. It was as if hearing that some people can hold their breath without dying or that there are people that never feel sad during the holidays. When the pandemic changed her experience with anxiety, my response was a confusing mixture of sadness that she was going through it, concern about how she would learn to cope with it, and the slightest bit of relief that perhaps now she would be more understanding of what I live with. I’m not proud of that last bit but who doesn’t want to be understood better?

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Daily Write

Awe and Wonder

Awe and wonder. The way that hearing birds chirping first thing in the morning feels like a thread connecting me to every ancestor I’ve never known but whose DNA is in my body. They knew birds, I’m certain of it.

And leaves. And rain and sunshine. Some of them knew love and what it was like to give life and to keep that life going long enough to grow into their own being with the next generation of us.

When I want to know the quiet of time before too much technology and too many people, nature lets me tap into that deep history.

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Daily Write

Finding My Way

In the book God in All Worlds, Lucinda Vardey writes “I believe we begin our search for meaning with doubt, pain, and a lot of questions” (3). In Buddhism, many of the teachings are about how to move beyond suffering. The people I grew up with turn to the Christian God when they are in pain, scared, confused.  For myself, the least authentic approach to Spirit is the path of pain and suffering. Prayer becomes…

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Daily Write

Photography as Meditation

As I was reading last night, I had my television on and tuned to my Chromecast. I wasn’t streaming anything through the Chromecast, just enjoying the slideshow that it displays by default. I looked up from my book at one point, and had to stop reading so that I could spend as much time with the photograph on the screen as the slide show would allow. A pier beckoning the viewer out onto a serene lake, the photograph was…

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