Category: Uncategorized
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Weather I
The weather where I live has exhibited signs of bi-polar disorder as of late. One day, really hot, in the upper 90’s. A few days later, a cold front, grey, drizzly, like my college days in Oregon. In fact, two days ago I felt like I was holed up in my dorm room again. Restless. […]
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What Brought Me to this Page
I recently rediscovered the first words I ever wrote. When I was 4 and 5 years old, I lived with my family in North Bennington, Vermont where I attended The Prospect School. It was a big white clapboard building built on a hillside so that it had one story on the frontside and two stories […]
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A Pleasing Aroma
Today would have been my grandmother’s 98th birthday. Her name was Marion Betty Kline Johnson. My mom’s mom. To be honest, I don’t know a whole lot about her life but I have strong memories and impressions of her. She smoked. A lot. When I was in college, I visited her at her apartment in […]
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Cuando hablo español
English translation below Cuando hablo españolEntro a otro mundo No solamente el mundo ecuatorianoDonde aprendí bailar la salsaY donde me caí en el amor por la primera vez Ni sólo el mundo mexicanoDonde ví con mis dos ojosQue la pobreza y la vida gozosa pueden existir juntas No solamente el mundo guatemaltecoCon sus autobuses eficientes […]
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Managing Anxiety
Feeling anxious today? Me too. For me, anxiety means shallow breathing. It means not sleeping well. It means ruminating thoughts. It means grasping outside myself for assurances that everything is going to be okay. To a large extent, popular media are anxiety generators. Rather than provide objective information, they inject alarm, uncertainty, polarization, outrage, and […]
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One Step Back, One Step Down
I have learned a lot about myself during the Covid pandemic. Mainly I learned things I already knew about myself, but had forgotten. Or I faced things I hadn’t needed to face in a long time. Or I learned how to observe myself doing things. In other words, I gained some more self-awareness. I learned […]
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A Greeting, 30 Years Later
I grew up going to a church camp called Camp Cazadero. The first time I attended was in 1982, the summer before I entered 5th Grade. It was marvelous. To get there, you had to drive to Sonoma County, along a two lane road that headed toward the coast, but just before you hit the […]
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Sustained Attention
I was on a 3-day retreat with other ministers at the Jesuit Retreat Center in Los Altos. “El Retiro” is build on a hill – one of “los altos”? – in the midst of the city. There is a freeway nearby, not to mention Mountain View and Sunnyvale and all the rest of Silicon Valley. […]
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Singing in the Car
While on sabbatical, I’ve stopped listening to the news. I still read the local newspaper (yes, we are subscribers), so I’m not completely out of the loop, but I am intentionally refraining from watching YouTube videos or listening to podcasts about politics or current events. It’s not that there is no value in these things, […]
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Not Needing to Explain Myself
I hope that you have been with a group of people before that you don’t have to explain yourself to. It’s not that you just sit there in silence without needing to communicate, but that the communication is free-flowing and unguarded. I have a group of friends that I have known since I was growing […]
Almost a Conversation 