Strange Kind of Love

Last week, I wrote about Professionals. Here is a scene from two decades ago, again featuring my son David. As far as professionalism was concerned, we were both works in progress.   David was missing. My two children and I lived in Los Rios, a community of...

Professionals

“I used to think people were looking at me when I walked into a room,” my son David said during his visit this past weekend. “But people weren’t really paying attention to me; they were thinking about themselves like I was. People like to talk about themselves,...

Monsters

In Where the Wild Things Are, Maurice Sendak told the story of a young boy named Max. Dressed as a wolf, Max misbehaved and was sent to his room. There he had a temper tantrum and wound up in a mysterious place with beasts called Wild Things – monsters. Childhood...

Fail, Fall and Fly

In The Active Life, Parker Palmer wrote, “Much human action is laced with the problem of pride…. Prideful action is often followed by a fall. But we make a mistake when we try to avoid that fall…” In my twenties and thirties, along with my teaching career,...

The Active Life Revisited

A few days ago, I travelled to DC and Baltimore to visit friends. While sharing thoughts about life changes, I mentioned Parker Palmer’s The Active Life. Some books are worth revisiting, and for me Palmer’s book is one of them. I first read The Active Life...

Selfies

Mother and I took a selfie during my visit last week. First, I updated her laptop’s operating system while we went to the dining room for lunch. Then I installed her printer software, held my iphone at arm’s length, took a picture of the two of us, emailed it to...