“For one person to love another, this is the most difficult of all our tasks.” Rilke Over the weekend I was feeling unmotivated and uninspired after a burst of writing several magazine articles and working on my memoir about moving to France. I had come to a difficult chapter and felt completely stuck. The Buddha said

“It is no more possible to live in the future, than it is to live in the past. If life is not now, it is never.” Wendell Berry We were invited to a birthday party for our neighbor, Jeanette Ducourneau, who was born on December 31, 1937. A group of fifty friends and family members

“On winter’s margin, see the small birds now With half-forged memories come flocking home To gardens famous for their charity. The green globe’s broken; vines like tangled veins Hang at the entrance to the silent wood. With half a loaf, I am the prince of crumbs; By time snow’s down, the birds amassed will sing

“I have walked through many lives some of them my own, and I am not who I was, through some principle of being abides, from which I struggle not to stray…” The Layers by Stanley Kunitz I recently returned to France from a trip to the United States after being away for over a year

Sometimes from sorrow, for no reason, you sing. For no reason, you accept the way of being lost, cutting loose from all else and electing a world where you go where you want to. Arbitrary, a sound comes, a reminder that a steady center is holding all else. If you listen, that sound will tell

One ship sails East, And another West, By the self-same winds that blow, ‘Tis the set of the sails And not the gales, That tells the way we go. Like the winds of the sea Are the waves of time, As we journey along through life, ‘Tis the set of the soul, That determines the

“In our village folks say god crumbles up the old moon into stars.” Alexander Solzenitsyn The full moon in Aquarius tonight underscores that we are each distinctive stars sharing our radiance with the world. France exemplifies this in its own unique way. It is a country of individualists, and as a nation attracts like-minded, independent

Without a net I catch a falcon and release it to the sky hunting god. Rumi   One afternoon in late May I heard the distinct sound of fluttering wings outside the gabled end of my house. I approached the nearest window and opened it, prompting flight to a bird that cast a very brief,

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast; A tree that looks at God all day, And lifts her leafy arms to pray; A tree that may in Summer wear A nest of robins in her hair;