When you find yourself sinking
Living with an illness, there may be times when the ice cracks and you fall through. Plans need to be released. What worked before no longer works. For a while, you may flounder. Be there, in the depths. Know that you will probably resurface. If you don’t, you get to...
From painting to mysticism
I painted this morning. My aide, Jenny, set out the paints and the paper and sprayed water on the paint tray to awaken the watercolors. My wooden-handled brushes sat beside the paints. I have had them for 30 years; they are old friends. I lifted a rectangular brush...
No more striving
Surrender is not a popular notion in our hard-charging, get-it-done culture. It came into my vocabulary when I began practicing the 12 steps. Step three is traditionally written “Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood...
The double surrender of chronic illness
This morning I asked my 18-year-old daughter to turn on some lights as she was leaving the apartment. She turned on my desk lamp and a hallway light near my desk and stopped with her hand on the door. “Do you need me to turn on the other light?” she asked, looking...
Surrender to love
When I was 20 years old and first claiming my identity as a contemplative mystic, I read “The Practice of the Presence of God,” a little book that describes the practice of Brother Lawrence, a 17th century Carmelite monk. I returned to the book recently, its text now...Subscribe to the monthly newsletter
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