Approval

Our dogs look to Keith and me for approval. “Good girl, Freya,” we say, “good boy, Heathcliff,” when they’ve obeyed a command. We often stroke them, too, even when they haven’t done anything, just because we love them. Heathcliff likes approval but loves routine....

On Sixty-Five

Early yesterday morning, as I sipped my coffee laced with milk and watched the dawn creep across the Rockfish Valley, I received a birthday present from Richard Rohr. “When you sit quietly and for extended times in nature, you see that everything changes,” he wrote in...

Anticipation

“You must be excited about your trip to Scotland,” a friend said to me last week. “To tell you the truth, I haven’t thought about it much,” I said, “which is strange because I’ve been wanting to go for years.” Anticipation. The story goes that Carly Simon wrote her...