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  • Mary

    As I meditate on the Passion of Jesus, my thoughts inevitably turn to Mary. Any of us who are mothers know the feeling of watching our children suffer. Sometimes we can help, kiss the boo boo, make everything better. Sometimes we can be a shoulder to cry on, and sometimes we can do nothing at…

  • Possible

    I dropped my kid off in the dark to catch the bus that will take her and her classmates to Washington DC. On the way home, the sky lightened, and it was the particular kind of spring light that makes everything look impermanent. Houses and buildings took on a cardboard quality, like they were a…

  • Walk

    I am one of a small handful of women in the world who dislike getting pedicures. The language barrier and my ticklish feet are part of my discomfort, but the biggest issue I have is that I don’t like the feeling of being served. Today, as the temperature inched over seventy degrees for the first time…

  • Sorry

    One by one, my students were telling me about the pretend flowers they grew in music class, and what they planned to do with them. “I grew a red rose and I’m going to keep it in my room so I can look at it.” “I grew a yellow flower and I’m going to give…

  • Around

    Today I taught music in the preschool my children attended, and that completes a circle for me. Over the years, in my role as an early childhood music educator, I have led programs in most of the places where my kids had their first playgroups, their library story-times, their kindergarten classrooms. All of the places…

  • #trypod

    There’s a campaign among some of my favorite podcasters to get the word out about the medium and it’s called #trypod.  Apparently, some people think that listening to podcasts is expensive or complicated, and because of that, they’re missing out, so the idea is to link to your favorites on social media so everyone will…

  • With, and a Little Ahead

    My dog, Bailey, walks with me and a little ahead. She can often smell or sense things I cannot, so in those moments, she’ll take the lead, but otherwise she stays with me, side by side. With me and a little ahead. It brings back a memory of when I was twenty, invited on retreat…

  • Damaged

    I shared the grocery aisles with a mother and her four small daughters and it was not going well. The two littlest ones were wiggly on the cart-bench, grabbing and opening food packages from the carriage. The five-year old periodically wandered away, attracted by brightly colored boxes and tasty snacks. The nine-year old did the…

  • Give

    My mother loved to give gifts. She loved hunting for and concocting just the right present, and she loved nothing more than watching me and my sisters open something great on Christmas morning.   As we got older, she would pick up on some small thing we might say during the year, and make it into…

  • Wink

    Someone winked at me yesterday and it was awesome. It doesn’t matter the source…old man, tiny girl, or anyone in between, a wink signifies a shared knowing without the need for words, and it cannot be denied. A wink says, “we’re on the same page” or “this will all work out just fine, don’t you…