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A little coffee to go with Coffee Table Wisdom Launching my podcast, Coffee Table Wisdom, reminds me of when I first launched a blog.  Although my first blog wasn’t really launched; it was more like a shy tiptoe into a world where stories and essays became public and could be read by anyone. I have to admit, it’s still thrilling to click on “publish” and see my work come up on a colorful page that has pictures and headings. Podcasting is just another way to tell a story. It’s

On the one hand, you have to be a little bit crazy to want to lock yourself into a room several hours each day to create worlds with the written word. On the other hand, story telling is sacred art. Stories can teach us, provoke us and make us feel and think in ways that we might not have otherwise. And the writer is always looking for this–what is it that I am writing which touches a universal place in the human condition? Even with a lofty vision of what writing is to you,

My writing journey is pretty inspirational, at least to me. For the past four years, I have been doing what musicians call “woodshedding,” the process of locking yourself in the woodshed and practicing until you can’t stand yourself anymore. That’s what I think it takes to become a good writer, and in my case a good novelist. I probably threw away more than half the words I wrote last year. So, is this what people mean by inspiring? Or is it possibly the definition of crazy?

My retreat partner Susan and I in Luven, with a statue of a Beguine. It is the work of women to balance the world, to know their strength and stand courageously in the light of their truth. A patriarchy without the balance of matriarchy creates an uneven playing field upon which women are subordinates rather than leaders. You don’t have to look too far to see how out of balance institutions and governments create both a physical and spiritual poverty when they do not include

Cathedral at Ghent The word “cathedral” means “the throne upon which she sits.” In 15th century Northern Europe, there was a worshipful attitude toward the Divine Feminine as embodied in Mary. In this time, the Beguines thrived. They lived in democratic communities, separate from the church, caring for each other and practicing  social justice by feeding the poor and tending to the sick. Truly the “cathedral” in all its majesty and art, is for me, a symbol to the beauty by wh

Our group goes to the Minnenhauf. It means “house of love.” We meet  Sister Felicitous, who tells us about the women from whose ideals her order of Benedictines borrow–the Beguines. This area was filled with Beguines at one time, pious women who lived to serve, who made lace, with intricate knots and turns, reflecting the focus of a meditative state, focused singularly on devotion. In the evenings the four or five nuns living at the Minnehauf sing in the chapel. They invite o

With the advent of each autumn since, I have planned a retreat. Just before I moved from Colorado to Oregon, I found myself sitting in the back of a large conference room, filled with two hundred and fifty people who I brought together to immerse in the study and contemplation of the great mystic, Meister Eckhart. A former Trappist monk, Dr. James Finley, facilitated the three days. I learned that I had the skill set to produce larger retreats. And in James, I found a friend

Thus far, my sixties have been the most exciting and fun part of my life. I never believed I would say that a few years ago. Sixty is, after all, a daunting age that marks the threshold of what we know as “old age,” or at least “older” age. And I certainly went through a time in my late fifties when I could feel my significance in the world, along with my smooth, tight skin, slipping and sagging away. But then I turned 60. I stopped working full-time, and started becoming the

The odyssey of sorting, purging and packing started in September when my husband “retired” from clinical practice. That resulted in an encore career in which he consults. Consult is a word that covers a myriad of sins…technical writing to product development. He is definitely not retired in the classical sense. He is working from home. Working from home is a lot less stressful than maintaining an office and it suits him.  I’ve been doing some part-time work too, but mostly it

Recently I’ve been following a blog by Ruth Rainwater. It’s a simple blog that lists a different gratitude every day. I look forward to reading what she writes. She makes the seemingly mundane beautiful and important. She takes things that I would have thought of as flat, and makes them full. I know that there is great power to change the heart and mind by being grateful. Gratitude has gotten me through some fierce sorrows. Sometimes the world seems like it is full of crazy b