"Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? . . . . Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel again their majesty and power?
What do we ever know that is higher than that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love?
We still and always want waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show"
-- Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
Please also visit DepthOverSpeed.com for some of my recent writings about life and attention.
Paying Attention to Attention A mini series of posts about the challenges of paying attention, managing time and other aspects of daily life a few years back.
Invitation - A song about Community I wrote this song last year about the experience of spending time with friends in community as part of A Small Group Cincinnati. It makes the invitation to join in a new conversation about life and community -- and I am still learning about these new conversations, myself, so I welcome the curiosity of anyone interested in exploring them together.
Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah One of the favorite songs of my life.This recording includes 2 verses that have usually been left out of performances with which most of us are familiar. Those 2 verses make the song a more complete, human and moving piece, I think. They bring an energy of redemption, or at least of accepting and integrating the broken parts of any human life.
Facebook is Our Front Porch Facebook is our new Front Porch. The first network to have achieved such community and entanglement spanning generations, distance and interests...
A Common Conversation, part 2 (a long conversation with a friend) Because I have been waiting to have these very kinds of conversations and stalling for any number of reasons, I posted about my wish to have more conversations that matter the other day with the question: “What is the Conversation you’ve been waiting to have?”
Thursday at lunch was such a conversation for me, with my friend, Cliff Ravenscraft. Listen to the conversation, here.
A Common Conversation, part 1 When someone asks about my favorite things to do, good conversation is pretty much at the tip of the list, along with making and listening to music. I realize sometimes that I what really like is to talk, which I know isn’t necessarily conversation, but I’m working on it. This is part one of a two part post about a conversation with my friend Cliff.
Enacting the future we wish to create In COMMUNITY - The Structure of Belonging, Peter Block provides an articulation of community feelings, wants and beliefs many of us have felt inside but haven’t always had words to express.
In Memory of Gregory S. Weeks - July 17, 1949 to May 1, 2008 My brother Greg, who survived metastatic melanoma and alcoholism in his 30's and lived for 20+ more years in good health, died of pancreatic cancer on May 1, 2008 at the age of 58, after living with the inoperable condition for a year and a half. It's hard for me to say all the ways in which both his living and dying have impacted my life and personal development. This link is to a copy of what I wrote for his obituary.
Cliff podcasts his lunch with Chris Cliff Ravenscraft is a professional podcaster, and he wants audio podcasting to not only be his living, but also a valuable part of being in community.
Closing the Post As mentioned in a questionably useful tribute to Twitter earlier today, I received a cell phone "tweet" this afternoon of a story by Joe Strupp about the Cincinnati Post's impending year end closing.
The Secret Loss of Bees It seems there ought to be a lot more buzz about our vanishing bees and what they mean to food and life everywhere.
Changed Minds If we continue to look at our problems the same old ways, we continue to have the same old problems. We need to see with fresh eyes. We need to have changed minds. This is an invitation to anyone who'd like to contribute ideas, personal experiences and content for a new web site: ChangedMinds.org...
Presence - book notes "It's common to say that trees come from seeds. But how could a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources needed to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or environment within which the tree grows. But the seed does provide something that is crucial: a place where the whole of the tree starts to form. As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth. In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges."
- From the Opening of PRESENCE
Office Aisle Journal Verse... A light but all too true look at a long and shameful addiction. :-)
Consciousness and Consumerism Connections between buying all that stuff we never really wanted while wondering where our local stores have gone…
The Power of NOW Reviewing Eckhart Tolle's book
A book about awakening, about living in the now instead of being lost in our thoughts about the past or the future. Even more, a practical guide, presented in a way that turns lights on all around us, enabling us to see a simple path to living an awakened life. A life empowered by our own Presence.
Conversations with Megan ...spending the afternoon with Meg... listening to Wilcox, leaning back in the chair, on the sofa, her tiny limbs tangled in my my arms, listening to the music, the words...
Shell Island A journal entry written a few years ago from the balcony of a room on the beach in North Carolina... Helpful, or at least very interesting sometimes, to read it again now that some of the years I wondered about have passed.
Taking Megan Dancing This was written one night in 1994 after a Brownie Troop Sweetheart dance. Dad and daughter dates... Gotta enjoy them while we can. Time flies.
Yearning for Justice A song born of a brief encounter with Liberation Theology. Maybe as much of a prayer of sorts, as a song.
Why I like Kurt "Man is not evil, they seem to say. He is simply too hilariously stupid to survive."
DONUTS The following article is a story. It is only a story. If it were a real-life account you would be instructed where to purchase a copy of Reader's Digest so that you could turn to the real-life, heart-warming, human interest blah blah blah section and be inspired and stuff...
