Musings on Dance, Food, Geek Stuff
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas,…
Good Bones by Maggie Smith Life is short, though I keep this from my children.Life is short, and I’ve shortened minein a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,a thousand deliciously ill-advised waysI’ll keep from my children. The world is at leastfifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservativeestimate, though I keep this from my children.For every bird there…
I wrote this 25 years ago. It feels as relevant as ever. ROOSEVELT ISLAND May 1995 Come to the window, the work can wait.See the craggy line where the water meetsThe shores of Roosevelt Island,Isn’t the tide higher than it was a day ago?Global warming, you say, glibly. I think of my homeland: 7,000 islandsThat…
This evening in the Skating Place there was a boy who was maybe six or seven years old going around the circle with us. At that hour, there were about ten of us skating, all adults. I round a corner and see the boy lying on the ground just bawling his eyes out, while two…
Zoom has a feature called “Hide Self View” where you still show your camera to the people you are in a meeting with, but not see a live view of yourself. As I think about this, “Hide Self View” is ironically about showing MORE of your true self to others. With your own camera visible…
So we are in Month 4 of the coronavirus pandemic quarantine, which is unbelievable and weird. Time has no meaning anymore, as people are fond of saying. Despite not getting to go to most of the places that were part of my regular routine (the office, the climbing gym, dance clubs and bars, restaurants, bakeries),…
The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet. Frederick Buechner This morning at Quaker Meeting for Worship, I’ve been reflecting about “my calling,” which has been a refrain that has run through my entire life. One way of understanding a “calling” is something that…
Today is the birthday of David Platt, my oldest, dearest friend in the world, and someone who had a huge impact on me at an important time in my life. When we met, I was a painfully shy, boringly average middle schooler. David was the opposite: smart, confident and vocal about his opinions on everything….
Today was the first time in years that I have given a message at Quaker Meeting for Worship. It was during Brooklyn Monthly Meeting’s virtual meeting, which I have been to a few times since the pandemic. Here’s what I shared: Friends, I have been thinking about this new structure for our Meeting. I think…
This morning at Quaker Meeting for Worship (on Zoom!), I was thinking about how easily triggered most of us are in this time, and how that places increased responsibility on all of us to be judicious about what we share. The COVID-19 pandemic is causing lots of people to be in a general state of…