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The Dalai Lama in Williamsburg
I had the opportunity last week to see the Dalai Lama speak in Williamsburg. He’s currently making a tour of small colleges and he was appearing at William and Mary, where my daughter is a student. It made for a delightful visit. Tickets for the event had sold out within 15 minutes. More than eight thousand people attended. The line into the arena began two and a half hours before the event—and these were all people with tickets. So interesting. The student who introduced him said we would likely remember this day for the rest of our lives. I loved that he marked the gravity of the moment. The student handed the Dalai Lama a green William and Mary...
Read MoreThe Armful by Robert Frost
This poem by Frost can be about a lot of things, I suppose. For me, this week, it seems to be about revision–and how hard it can be to hold coherent images and ideas and how sometimes you just have to put them down and rearrange them–again. Madness, perhaps–but also it seems now a necessary madness. I went back to earlier chapters of One Year of Writing and Healing to pick up some threads to carry forward–and realized that deep revision is again necessary. Chapter 2 as it stands now is just wrong–and changing that begins to change everything. Madness. For every parcel I stoop down to seize I lose some other off my arms and knees, And...
Read MoreAll Shall be Well?
For some reason a couple weeks ago, and probably while working on Chapter 7, I found myself looking for the quote by Julian of Norwich about all being well. I found this: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well which T.S. Eliot then included in the fourth quartet of his Four Quartets: And all shall be well and All manner of thing shall be well And I also found, unexpectedly, this song, which I quite like, by a young man by the name of Gabe Dixon. The song is called, “All Will Be Well.” ____________________________________________________________________ The photo at the top of this post is from Wikipedia. Julian of...
Read MoreFiguring Out the Good Part
It is raining this morning–a lovely reprieve after days of dry heat–and I am happy to report that I am posting Chapter 7 of One Year of Writing and Healing: Figuring Out the Good Part. I am attaching it here: Chapter 7: Figuring Out the Good Part You can also find it at Chapters along with the 6 chapters that precede it. Feedback, as always, is welcome.
Read MoreTalking to Grief by Denise Levertov
I am posting Chapter 6 at Chapters. Finally. The chapter is from the draft of my book, One Year of Writing and Healing. (It feels so good to be returning to it now.) The title for the chapter, “Making a Place for Grief,” was inspired by and begins with an excerpt from “Talking to Grief” by Denise Levertov: You long for your real place to be readied before winter comes. You need your name, your collar and tag. You need the right to warn off intruders, to consider my house your own and me your person and yourself my own dog. I think there’s a kind of brilliance in this poem, that resonates with so much that I understand about imagery...
Read MoreWhen I Am Asked by Lisel Mueller
I’m not at all sure that June is the right time for grief. But that’s the topic of the next chapter of my book, Chapter 6, and so that’s what I’ve been working on these last couple weeks. It’s interesting. I’ve tended, for a variety of reasons, to look at grief more in November—that’s when I tend to hear and feel most the voices of grief—and to feel a resonance between those voices and the waning light. Now, in a sense, I feel as if I’ve been looking at grief out of season. We’ve also had an especially mild summer so far, with cool, fresh mornings, the windows open, the kind of air that makes me want to be out of doors, walking, and out working...
Read MoreThe Buddha’s Last Instruction by Mary Oliver
During a bittersweet week of graduations, watching a whole flock of students move on, my heart full with their moving, I keep coming back to this poem. Now, only this morning, does it occur to me that the poem describes a kind of graduation speech–a person, in this case Siddhartha Gautama, trying to condense what he learned into a few words. The poem begins this way: “Make of yourself a light,” said the Buddha, before he died. 5 words. Make of yourself a light. The speaker of Mary Oliver’s poem connects this instruction to the rising of the sun itself. I think of this every morning as the east begins to tear off its many...
Read MoreAbout Me
I'm a former physician, now a high school English teacher, returning to Writing and Healing because it's one of those topics that just will not let me go. I'm working on a book now, transforming my previous site, One Year of Writing and Healing, into a more coherent form, as well as adding a lot of new material. If you feel so moved, I'd love to have you be a part of it. You can find your invitation under Book above and also on my home page.