I feel so proud tonight, May 6th, 2008, to have had the opportunity, the honor, the privilege of voting for Barack Obama today in North Carolina's Democratic Primary. I feel so proud that this rare leader, such as I have never seen in my lifetime, has handily swept a victory in my home state. I feel so proud, so proud tonight, of my state, North Carolina, for so unexpectedly bringing its tarnished (by decades of Jesse Helms and other Republican victories) political power to bear in one of t... read more

At our Hoop Path Retreat Fire last summer, some of you will remember that for my Fire offering I burned a huge stack of checks. These were the checks my father had signed over the last six months of his life, when an aggressive tumor was rapidly overtaking his brain. Steadily his signature disintegrated until it became an unrecognizable, childlike scribble. Finally his signature was replaced by that of his executor, an old family friend.

Finding the checks when I cleaned out his house... read more

Over the last few weeks, my consciousness has been pricked again by the flat-out realness and even perhaps the necessity--certainly the inescapability--of the shadow side of life, the heavier and darker side that lives with or without our acknowledgment.

In youth, I lionized tragic figures like Sylvia Plath (from whose poem "Poppies in October" comes the title of this blog)--whose explorations of loss magnetized me. I was drawn to and identified with emotions like nostalgia, sadness, wi... read more