Don’t Stop Believin’
1
I miss Hilary Mantel already. And I think: it is already later than we think. Today I’d love to share a few reflections on her life and work… From Maggie O’Farrell (“Hamnet”), in The Guardian: We have lost another monarch…
It’s hard when you do the right thing and end up in the wrong place. My friend Mary Raymond stops in at Bacon today with a funny and heartfelt essay on how she got herself into a tricky situation, and…
Pied Beauty by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) Glory be to God for dappled things – For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow; For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim; Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings; Landscape plotted and pieced…
by Alicia Ostriker To be blessed said the old woman is to live and work so hard God’s love washes right through you like milk through a cow To be blessed said the dark red tulip is to knock their…
Swimming in rough seas, it can be hard to find the shore. You swim as hard as you can, as long as you can, and there it is, finally – the shore! You’re back. You almost can’t believe it. You…
“It was a couple of springs ago. I was driving into New York City from New Jersey on one of those crowded, fast-moving turnpikes you enter it by,” writes Frederick Buechner. “It was very warm. There was brilliant sunshine, and…
This Sunday finds me in Atlanta helping a daughter move into a new apartment. Unpacking yesterday, she couldn’t find an Important pair of black jeans. Her favorite pair. It’s kind of a disaster! (They’ll turn up, of course; surely they…
What do you yearn for? Here’s a little poem by Louise Glück that made me think twice… Lament Suddenly, after you die, those friends who never agreed about anything agree about your character. they’re like a houseful of singers rehearsing…
I’ve realized, lately, that I live as if suffering is a shocking and insulting surprise. How foolish! How could I be this old and not yet understand, at my core, that suffering is simply part of this journey, part of…