“The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible.  Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.”  – Mark Nepo This was today’s reading from The Book of Awakening – Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have Imagine my surprise when I opened today’s reading and found this...

Yesterday was the first day of Lent, a time when Christians often make an attempt to “give something up” for forty days in order to induce some reflection on the sacrifice of Christ.  As Christians, we are not the only faith that gives things up from time to time in order to focus ourselves on sacrifice and to return to what is truly important. Following...

Last month in a regular update I receive from an executive coach our company used to work with I received a bit of a wake up call.  Roger, the coach, was telling us all that he had just been diagnosed with a brain tumor.  It was a jolt out of the blue just as he was contemplating retirement and what the “next” phase of life would be for him. ...

About this time four years ago I was in Kentucky with my father.  He had been battling a rare blood disorder that had just turned in to Acute Myelogenous Leukemia.  I quit my job and traveled back home to take care of him for whatever time he had left.  This was one of the most difficult, yet one of the most rewarding times of my life.  I learned so much from...

This Thanksgiving week I missed my mother more than usual.  I know what “kicked” it off.  My daughter, Lindsay went to Disney World with her Dad and his family.  She sent me a text message from Epcot “I am eating in Mimi’s Italian restaurant in Epcot”.  Suddenly my eyes filled with tears at a long ago memory……. My mother...

Thanksgiving has come a long way from that first feast of November 1621.  The original Thanksgiving was a celebration of the first successful corn harvest for the colonists of Plymouth.  A feast that would not have been possible had the Native Americans not taught the colonists how to cultivate corn.  Back then growing a sufficient amount of food to survive was...

I am fascinated by adventure and often looking to create new adventures for myself. While shuffling through old family papers I came across the letters of a reluctant adventurer from my family. Her name was Maddie Abbott and she was just 16 years old when her adventure began. It was 1860 and war was brewing in America. Maddie and her three siblings had lost their...

Stewardship -the responsible overseeing and protection of something considered worth caring for and preserving Everywhere I hear and see finger pointing about who is responsible for this problem or that problem – global warming, the economy, loss of the moral compass, hunger, poverty. You name it, everyone is looking for someone or something to blame. As I...

After our lazy morning on the porch and a late breakfast, we loaded two canoes and two kayaks on the truck. We headed out down the dusty, winding gravel road upstream for a little outing on the river. We parked at a State Park – $2 – and drove down to the lot by the river. There was a building near the river called the Shot Tower. This is an old Civil War...

This has been a week of digging in to the past in a multitude of ways and cleaning my “mental house” in the process.  First of all, I am having a garage sale in two weeks and have to get through all the boxes that are story my mother’s things, John’s things, my old things, Lindsay’s things, Mary Mac’s things, things, things,...