Singing the Red Dress Song is both an essay (which was long-listed for the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Award) and a book-length composite of short reflections on grounded spirituality. I’ve spent the last three years trying to find a publisher who loved this work enough to print it.
Ah, shoot.
Since the point was to share what I’ve discovered, and I am getting older by the minute, I see no reason to wait. So, below, you’ll find the introduction and the eponymous essay. I’ll be posting each chapter in order, with the occasional podcast, over the next year. Happy reading and listening! And if you would like to support this endeavor, you can contribute through an e-transfer or cheque to the address on the bottom of the page.
Learning to Love What I Love: Time to Give It All Away
There’s a new mental disorder stalking the western world: Nature Deficit Disorder. Our widespread disconnection from the natural world—most of us can’t distinguish one tree from another, don’t walk in the woods, don’t look at the stars, rarely stand in an unaltered landscape—is making us sick. The list of effects I found in the official …
Learning to Love What I Love: Street Walkers
Street Walkers Ten years ago, in our lake, at the mouth of the bay where we locals swim, four young people drowned. I have not felt like I could tell this story. It is, for some families, a private and forever grief upon which I have no right to intrude. But parts of that story …
Learning to Love What I Love: Cosmic and Particular
Our daughter-in-law, Jane, interpreted the saying “It takes a village to raise a child” liberally. Of course, in these days, municipal boundaries are a bit wider than they used to be. A day’s plane journey appears to mark the village limits for our family. Which is why you would have found me in Washington, D.C. a …
The First Practice, Or Learning to Love What I Love: The Red Thread
Songyuan asked, Why can’t clear-eyed Bodhisattvas sever the red thread? When I was in my early thirties, a ragtag group of friends and family assembled weekly in my living room to meditate. Our teacher was a recovering alcoholic and self-identified Sufi who taught us glorious chants. We’d sing and sing and sink into a silence …
Forward
Twenty years ago, in a fit of wild openness, my husband and I decided to move. Not just to another city or state, but to another country. It didn’t happen all at once, but about three years after the initial spasm, I found myself transplanted (alone; it took him two and a half years to …
Singing the Red Dress Song
I roll over to turn off the light and address a silent prayer to my deepest part, to the Holy, to my unconscious, to whatever or whomever prescribes the nightly play that goes on when I slump into sleep: May I please have some joy in my dreams tonight? I’ve been tired, bone tired. The …