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Wide Spot, February 2022: Grown Up
My baby sister had brand new red roller skates. She lurched through the kitchen as I stood silent, radiating envy. The floor trim between the kitchen and the next room ...
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Wide Spot, January 2022: Wishing and Willing
One of my favorite online resources is the Greater Good Science Center at UC-Berkeley. Researchers in the science of happiness and gratitude, they’ve got a bang-up website and tons of ...
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Wide Spot, December 2021: Broken Bones
Environmental activist and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy once said, “You don’t need to do everything. Do what calls your heart; effective action comes from love. It is unstoppable, and it ...
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Wide Spot, November 2021: Imagine That
Years ago, as part of a retreat for environmental activists, we did an exercise imagining different points of view. Here was a scenario: a waterfront property owner had dumped sand ...
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Wide Spot, October 2021: Revisionist History
Last night, out of the blue, an email arrived bearing a 43-year-old video. Sent via a chain of friends and relatives, the clip showed me at my first wedding, singing ...
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Wide Spot, August 2021: Cooking the Potatoes
It’s a fallacy that deer don’t eat potatoes, or at least strip the plants naked. I guess I should be grateful for the stalks and tubers left behind, and hope ...
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Wide Spot, September 2021: Words Matter
“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” When I was a kid, that children’s chant was a talisman to protect us from the startlingly ...
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Wide Spot, July 2021: The Answer, My Friend…
If you’re as old as I am, you’re already singing the next line in this iconic Dylan song. You also know that the answer “blowing in the wind” is both ...
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Wide Spot, June 2021: Fresh New Hell
The line “What fresh new hell is this?” was famously coined by the American critic Dorothy Parker when her writing was interrupted by the telephone. There’s something deeply true captured ...
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Wide Spot, May 2021: Moral Proximity
I am an avid reader; unlike my high-minded family and friends, however, I prefer novels to non-fiction. A well-written novel can introduce me to a whole new way of understanding ...
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If you love the justice of Jesus Christ more than you fear human judgment then you will seek to do compassion. Compassion means that if I see my friend and my enemy in equal need, I shall help them both equally. Justice demands that we seek and find the stranger, the broken, the prisoner and comfort them and offer them our help. Here lies the holy compassion of God that causes the devils much distress.”
— Mechthild of Magdeburg
Your heart knows the way, run in that direction.
–Rumi