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Two summers ago, I stood with a friend by the McKenzie River, canning tomatoes and making applesauce, watching the graceful water. We were oblivious to the coming conflagration. Only one week later, fire would destroy his house among hundreds, along with the sheltering forests.

Returning this year on a chilly spring day, it felt strange to intentionally build a fire where houses and forests burned. Even… READ MORE

“I noticed that your posts and your retreats are all about gratitude, joy, beauty…you do know there is more than that, right? There is suffering, there is pain, there is ugly. It can’t be sunshine all the time.”

I am stunned to realize that my friend thinks that to “Celebrate What’s Right in the World” is to walk around pretending. 

He couldn’t have been further from the truth.

I don’t deny… READ MORE

It’s been ninety-six years since my mother’s birth and two years since her passing, give or take elastic stretches of time. The feeling of time’s passage has bent in ways that elude my measure, during the pandemic. Sometimes the last two years have felt longer than ninety-six.

As a family and community, it took us those two stretched years to be able to gather to celebrate her creative, wild, and loving… READ MORE