It’s a Wonderful Life: Shaping Each Other for Good, and Be Grateful Home alone Christmas week, David and I again observed the annual ritual of watching both “It’s a Wonderful Life” with Jimmy Stewart and Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol.” So there we were, sitting in our chairs by the fire watching these two venerable…

Stress-Testing the System: Democracy and Our Human Lives Well, it looks like the 2020 presidential election season is limping to a close. And so far, I guess we are the winners! On Nov. 25, Alexander Burns makes the following observation on page one of The New York Times: “As President Trump’s efforts to overturn the…

Post-Election and Leaning Left: It’s Not the End of the World, Folks I used to argue with my Dad that people are basically good. I was raised in a politically conservative household, and my Dad – as he would say – pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made it financially the hard way: He…

Post-First Debate Blues: Goodbye to Our Way of Life It’s difficult to ignore the big things going on around us. Early voting, looming election, pandemic and President with COVID-19; stores and restaurants boarded up, masks now a way of life – an essential to my wardrobe. Not much else going on really. We voted this…

The Boat: A Sign of Hope, A Sign of Our Future If you look at the lead photo, you will see the newest member of our family – a 38-foot speedboat (a friend of ours describes it as “zoom, zooming!”), that now sits in our driveway but soon will likely occupy a slip at a…

A Road Trip Toward Hope: ‘All Will Be Well?’ Julian of Norwich– a 14th-century English mystic – wrote down a series of visions that she received as she thought she lay dying. And probably the most famous line from her writings are the words, “All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all…

Escape to the Mountains: A View Through the Fog An old friend of David’s sent us some funny lines during the worst phase of the COVID-19 lockdown. One read, “Coronavirus has turned us all into dogs. We roam the house all day looking for food. We’re told ‘no’ if we get too close to strangers.…

The Upside of the Lockdown: Patience and Peace One day last week, during my daily “quiet time” (which most days are nowadays), it occurred to me that the peace David and I feel most days is a desirable place to be in any case. Now, I told myself, what I need to work on is…

Life in a Broken Time: Where the Light Shines Through Someone once said something like “we are all broken, and where the cracks occur, that’s where the light shines through.” And for me, one of my human sources of light, a dear friend, has just left this world for the next and better one. In…

“Don’t Tell Me What You Can’t Do, Tell Me What You Can Do!” Creating a Life in a Time of Darkness Well folks, this is a dark, uncertain time. And periodically, I’m hit by a wave of sadness. Sadness for us – can’t go out to restaurants, can’t see friends, can’t have church services ……