Category: Community

Tiny Choices and Small Moments

“So, what are you plans for the day?” I asked Sig one morning last week, before he got too involved in monitoring our stocks.

“I haven’t decided,” he casually responded.

Heading upstairs to get ready for the day, with a stop in the kitchen to warm up my coffee, I thought how wonderful, how privileged even, to have the freedom to decide your day. Later on, I mentioned this to Sig, and he agreed, both of us recognizing the gift, the abundance, the richness of his statement and our lived reality.

old pine on the riverbank at sunrise

Yesterday, reading a couple of blogs from my writerly friends, both meandered around this insight. Helen, in Ageless Possibilities, opened her reflection inspired by a quote from novelist, Louise Penny, in which she describes life as being made up of the tiny choices we each make every day. Helen writes,“Years ago, I made a collage titled Someday, a visual dream of reading, gardening, lazing, yoga, friends, and family. I did not realize then that someday was quietly unfolding through my daily choices.”

Gretchen, author of the wise and bittersweet memoir, Mother Lode: Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver (IMHO, required reading for anyone navigating the care of elderly parents) wrote with spicy humor and a dash of irreverence, “One does not have to carpe the crap out of every single day.” Call it a gift to self as she described her recent 73rd birthday, shored up by others who echoed that it’s always the small moments of a life – being present to and curious about – that matter.

We’ve had a ridiculously cold start to summer with inches of heavy, wet snow falling in the foothills and highway whiteouts on Solstice. Last weekend, thunderstorm warnings resulted in hailstorms that shattered flowers and shredded hostas and the fragile spinach, arugula and lettuce seedlings. The local greenhouse warned that recovery might be tenuous, particularly for large-leaved vegetables and fragile tomatoes. In the scheme of things, we needed moisture. Still do, as I recalled a skillful gardener-friend saying a few years ago, after a similar dry winter and spring, that if we dug down, at best we’d see an inch or so of damp soil and then dry, sandy earth beneath. I make mention of this because I’d planned to spend time weeding and tending to those hail-struck pots and beds. But instead, I made the small, yet significant choice to visit a friend who I hadn’t seen since we celebrated my birthday. My friend is living with lethal cancer, and depending on the day, would probably say on borrowed time, where and when those tiny choices, and small moments, matter enormously.

The final post I read yesterday was written by Anne Lamott in response to the USA’s choice to bomb Iran yesterday. A choice with consequences too profound and potentially devastating to fathom.

“I have no answers but do know one last thing that is true: Figure it out is a bad slogan. We won’t be able to. Life is much wilder, complex, heartbreaking, weirder, richer, more insane, awful, beautiful and profound than we were prepared for as children, or that I am comfortable with. The paradox is that in the face of this, we discover that in the smallest moments of taking in beauty, in actively being people of goodness and mercy, we are saved.”

We are saved.

May it be so.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Bragging Rights

Early Sunday morning I completed my first half marathon.

For twelve hours, from 7:00 pm Saturday night to 7:00 am Sunday morning, I joined hundreds of poets from around the world in writing a poem an hour for twelve or twenty-four. Hosted by Caitlin and Jacob Jans from Toronto, I opted for twelve. Having the choice of joining the first or the last half, I elected the latter, knowing my preference for writing in the dark stillness as the day begins or ends. And given a recent bout of mid insomnia, waking like clockwork around 3:00 am (and what I learned during the marathon is called the “hour of the wolf”), I figured I’d be OK for the duration. And I was.

Once registered and having completed the online orientation, I took a peek at posts sharing preparation tips and writing strategies. I kept it simple by jotting down a few inspiring phrases that I’d heard or read last week, trusting they’d provide enough light structure for creating. I made snacks from leftovers, abstained from wine at dinner instead drinking an “americano,” and brewed several mugs of black tea over the course.

Funny thing is, I almost missed the start. By four hours!

Hard to believe, given I’d just been in Ontario and regularly call my parents, that I would have mixed up time zones. Instead of grokking that the official start time of 9:00 am EDT would be 7:00 am my time, I somehow thought it was 11:00 am. Ambivalence was definitely at play, though intention won the day, as arriving to my studio after supper Saturday, puttering around and getting organized, I thought I’d check in on the proceedings shortly after 7. There I saw the prompt posted for Hour 13, and recalled that was to be my start for the half marathon.

Thankfully, during my puttering, I’d given thought to writing a “found” poem from the book titles sitting on my desk in front of me. And that became my first poem, giving me a time to catch my breath and race upstairs to share my near calamity with Sig.

My strategy proved effective as I weaved a line I’d written down with Caitlin’s hourly verbal and/or visual prompts. I experimented with form, writing haiku, haibun, list, abecedarian, ekphrastic, and free verse. I realized my objective of creating some fresh pieces and successfully wrote a poem an hour, posting, and reading a few other entries.

With eyes “scorched” from twelve hours online, and a mushy brain that continued to compose even as I fell into bed at 7 am, I concluded that what I’d done once I’d not do again. But with rest and time outside planting my herbs and salad greens, and a more thoughtful review of my writing, I’ll reconsider.

While most of us conceded our efforts are at best “sh…tty first drafts” (thanks, Anne Lamott), several of mine are rough pearls in need of a polish to shine.

And I get to join four hundred global poets claiming bragging rights.

Thank Goodness for A Found Poem — when I confused time zones!
the carrying of apples on a windowsill,
when bright dead things become the creative act,
and the book of alchemy transcends the hurting kind

What kind of daughter messes up the time zone and writes
her first half marathon poem from book titles
sitting on her desk in front of her?

Rattle—d, but a smart one.

(Book titles in italics from the following authors in order of use: Ada Limón, Shawna Lemay, Ada Limón, Rick Rubin, Suleiaka Jaouad, Ada Limón, Rayanne Haines, Timothy Green (ed))

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Right On Time

“When a complex system is far from equilibrium,
small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos
have the capacity to shift the entire system
to a higher order.”

Ilya Prigogene

And this is what emerged in celebration of my birthday. Several small islands of coherence wherein “emotional density” (thanks to my friend Helen for introducing the term), presence, being seen and heard, AND acknowledging life’s inevitable one-way direction, became the criteria – anticipated and realized – for each gathering. Good food…fine wine… flowers and balloons. And meaningful, heartfelt conversations.

Given so much external chaos agitating, activating, and creating inner turmoil, I couldn’t have asked for a more fitting crossing into this new decade. Even the few unexpected exceptions simply became part of the landscape, reminding me again to let be and let go.

On Saturday, over a beautifully presented homemade filo pie evoking spring, made with salmon, leeks, eggs and cheese, accompanied by fresh tomato and cucumber and dill salads, followed by a dessert of individual Pavlova with lemon curd and blackberries, my yoga sister asked how it felt to be seventy? I sat quietly for several minutes. How did it feel? What had been emerging? What did I anticipate?

I silently recalled the wish I’d made when blowing out a candle at dinner with my Camino friends and then another in my monthly Zoom call with my island girlfriend.

Suddenly, out burst my response, “I’m right on time,” to which my friend burst out laughing at the utter spontaneous rightness of it. “Yes,” she said, “All your life … your steps and mis-steps…your practice… your devotion that waxes and wanes… have brought you precisely to this place, at this time. Right on time. Ready to step again into your life.”

Later, we all moved to the sofas in the room, looking out over the peaceful monochromatic vista of a farmer’s razed field and the lake shore beyond. There, we began in earnest sharing our fears, anxieties, and knowings about this time. Like me, they have the heightened awareness from being of German descent and remembering its history. To be seen and heard in the safe arms of our long-tended friendship, we were creating another island of coherence, knowing full well its sacred, though increasingly fragile right. Like the millions who showed up across the states last week to protest their president and his administration, seeing and hearing each other peacefully, without incident, saying this is ENOUGH, seeing we are not alone.

Like the Nobel prize winning chemist quoted above, to my friend’s Vedic way of thinking, simple actions particularly in such dark times have subtle yet significant capabilities, like a stone dropped in the pond, or the mythic flap of a butterfly’s wing altering the wind and weather. Right on time to shift the entire system to a higher order.

Let’s blow on another candle, shall we?

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Composting Hope

…sometimes hope looks like compost, slow, surprising, quietly transforming what was into what could be.
So, maybe the best we can do is let ourselves be changed by love, by grief, by dirt under our fingernails, and by small, ordinary acts of grace.
So, wherever you are today, may you remember that your smallness is not insignificance, that love really is fundamentally expressed in potato chips and text messages and a place at the table. It is all still love. And that belonging is not something we earn, it’s something we practice over and over and over again…

~ Kate Bowler, Everything Happens with Kate Bowler, April 2, 2025 ~



Not a poem, but certainly akin to what I often post here on Fridays.

Several years ago, a dear friend grieving the passing of her daughter, told me about Kate Bowler. Admittedly slow on the uptake, to both Kate’s writing and podcasts, I recently subscribed to her weekly Lenten email, The Hardest Part. This week’s description of her recent podcast with long-time friend, Jeff Chu, struck a chord:

We talked about what it means to feel stuck in a life that doesn’t quite fit. About the grief of loving people who may never love us the way we wish. About small, ordinary acts of care—texts, meals, potato chips—that remind us we belong to each other. If you’re in the messy middle, tending what’s dying, planting without guarantees, or quietly rebuilding your hope, this conversation is for you.

And it was. Right on point. A bit of balm for its honesty, vulnerability, and invitation, as I’d been shaming and shunning myself for letting small and petty resentments and disappointments, and bigger betrayals eat away at me.

Their conversation reminded me – as I, we, navigate these bone-jarring and often dispiriting days – that I’m in another “messy middle”… of the Lenten season… of winter giving over to spring… of where I find myself in my own lifespan, soon to cross into the next decade. “May you live in interesting times.” Wasn’t that the greeting? Ahhh, well...

In case you’d like to listen, here’s the link.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Making Spring


“As long as the Earth can make a spring every year, I can.
I won’t give up until the Earth gives up.” – Alice Walker

“Indeed, to garden — even merely to be in a garden — is nothing less than a triumph of resistance against the merciless race of modern life, so compulsively focused on productivity at the cost of creativity, of lucidity, of sanity; a reminder that we are creatures enmeshed with the great web of being…” – Maria Popova

“Like the seeds, we have to straddle that paradox of not leaving the comforts of our gestational time too quickly, while finding ways to keep moving. Coming out of winter is like waking from hibernation—we need to go slowly, steadily…
…As we step into the capacities of our next becoming, we must do two things. The first is to come into a clear conversation with that pulse of vitality and originality which is growing within us, and the other is to meet, name, and respect our resistances to that growth.
After all, resistance is what strengthens and protects us in ways we may not yet understand. Sometimes what looks like hesitation is actually wisdom in disguise.” – Toko-pa Turner

“After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on — have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear — what remains? Nature remains; to bring out from their torpid recesses, the affinities of a man or woman with the open air, the trees, fields, the changes of seasons — the sun by day and the stars of heaven by night.” – Walt Whitman

Another snowstorm.
A new salvo of political cruelties.
A week further into the northern hemisphere’s Spring.
A vow made and shared.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

This Spring

soon…

It’s 7:00 am Sunday morning. I’m an early riser. Lately, too early as I’ve been plagued with a bout of early morning insomnia, waking around 3. Sometimes I toss a bit, listen to the slow and steady breath of Sig sleeping beside me and try to synch my breath with hopes of falling back to sleep. When my mind overrides that intention, I quietly rise, slip into my robe and slippers and head downstairs to read, or write, or take my place on my cushion, or stare out the window, wondering.

In a couple of hours, I’ll be attending an onsite, in-person writing workshop. Hosted by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta, it’s described as “an all-day retreat designed to nourish your creative process. Writing exercises, inspiring prompts, and focused discussion will get your juices flowing and keep you motivated for days and weeks afterwards.” Goodness, I hope so, for like an Alberta spring, no sooner do my juices start to melt and flow, when they freeze solid and need to be chipped and chopped to get flowing again.

Last week in my monthly online writers’ circle, we each spoke of being in a fallow season, making reference to Katherine May’s memoir Wintering; gave space for our reactions to democracy’s demise in the face of growing fascism; and anticipated Spring’s arrival the next day. A closing offering of a poem which I’ll share here to close today’s short, and “OK enough” post.

This Spring

How can I love this spring
when it’s pulling me
through my life faster
than any time before it?
When five separate dooms
are promised this decade
and here I am, just trying
to watch a bumblebee cling
to its first purple flower.
I cannot save this world.
But look how it’s trying,
once again, to save me.

~ James A. Pearson ~

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.

Mindful

Mindful

Every day
I see or hear
something
that more or less

kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle

in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for –
to look, to listen,

to lose myself
inside this soft world –
to instruct myself
over and over

in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,

the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant –
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,

the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help

but grow wise
with such teachings
as these –
the untrimmable light

of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

– Mary Oliver –


“How are you?” ask friends who I’ve not seen, nor spoken to for a while.
“Terrified,” my response.

Not afraid, but terrified…for my country…the illegal apprehensions, deportations, and denied entry…the constant blatant disregard for law…evil in the guise of leadership.

Not a very mindful response, or is it? Certainly more intense and less palatable than “afraid.” But in the moment, truthful, uncensored. And then it passes. The weight of it lessens for its utterance. But I know, too, that I need those moments of seeing and hearing that kill me with delight.

Thankfully, Walker obliges. Every day. The shine in his eyes, tongue hanging in joyful anticipation as I dress to play with him outside. Chasing him with one of the store of sticks he’s taken from the woodpile in the back. Our backyard scattered with them. Or inside, tugging on the damp-with-drool dishrag nearly shredded, or his blue racquetball, or red kong – each tight in his mouth, until he lets go in false surrender just to keep the game between us going.

Thankful, too, that yesterday’s sunshine and warmth allowed me to sit outside on a cafe’s patio to eat lunch after my 8+km river valley walk. All of it a balm. Nature and good food as co-regulators.

And that exquisite hand-made card sent by a friend who is excelling at paper quilling, her latest fascination. In yesterday’s mail, the envelope with my name and address, written by a hand I didn’t recognize. The note inside, bearing the same beautiful script, thanking me for my words, the tapestry I weave with them, the meaning they bring to her.

Coming through a “wintering” season, again with many more rejections of my writing than acceptances, with words laying fallow, deep underground, her gift like a prayer made out of new, spring-green grass.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. And to you, Cate, thank you.

An Email Sent to a Friend Before Dawn

Buds in Spain, March 2020
(we know now the darkness that was soon to fall upon us all)

My gosh…what sweetness
to suddenly hear your voice and words
singing
on the radio
this morning.

My heart needed it all.

Such heavy harrowing times.
My words are stuck and stuffed
like my head cold.

Anyways…this moment
a sweet one.

Hope this finds you well.

Much love and kindness.

~ Katharine ~

Re-reading my email, with my friend’s lovely reply, knowing that I am, like many around me, at a loss for words, I knew this was “OK enough” for today’s photo and poem feature. With a line break here and there, formatted into stanzas…yes, it would be “OK enough.”

And how simple a gesture, to respond in the moment to the surge of surprise and joy upon hearing my friend’s name and then her singing, to reach out and connect when it’s darkest… before dawn.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.
May we all be bearing up well, responding in the moment to those many surges of unexpected joy.

So each word, each photograph, each email matters.
Each kind word, each warm embrace matters.
It’s what we have which I have to believe can turn the tide,
perhaps first within the unseen, liminal spaces.

Regardless of My Age

“baby, it’s cold outside”

It’s been mighty cold here in Alberta, and across Canada. A much-needed, honest-to-goodness winter with a snowpack forecasters say will lessen the impact of spring and summer forest fires. Temperatures well below zero, made colder with wind, killing off viruses and vermin. A restoration of balance that, while I appreciate, as I said to Sig as we layered to go out, I wish I wasn’t in. It’s been less than a month since celebrating his birthday in Huatulco, Mexico, but it feels like ages with this profound contrast.

And Walker, despite inheriting Annie’s insulated coat, and boots that he reluctantly wears, has found his first winter too cold to do much more outside than his business. And even that’s done fast, carefully perched on three legs, alternately the fourth to keep it from freezing. Last week, both of us bundled to play in the backyard, not a minute later and he was at the door. That night, he didn’t eat his dinner and slept all evening instead of his usual watching TV (I kid you not!) or playing with us. I sensed he was depressed and reflected to Sig we needed to move someplace more temperate, as both Walker and I need to walk…outside…in Nature…without freezing.

I’m going on about this because I’ve noticed with every passing year, I’m less inclined to brave winter’s elements and that troubles me. I used to ice skate…cross country and downhill ski…I haven’t walked with my Camino group since Christmas. Dog walking has become episodic. Reading my friend, Gretchen’s post this morning got me to thinking more about my own aging and how it’s showing up.

“Ageism is the last bastion of political incorrectness, and no one is going to fight it with us or for us. No one else cares, until they arrive there themselves…”

Gretchen Staebler, “You’re Doing Great…For Your Age”

I met Gretchen at a writing retreat years ago on Whidbey Island. Then, she was working on her – now published and highly recommended – moving, tender, and funny memoir, Motherlode: Confessions of a Reluctant Caregiver. (For local readers, it’s available to borrow from my public library.) I love Gretchen’s fresh and candid take on life, and too, her big heart from which she responds to my recent posts about the harrowing state of our world. From her post which inspired my writing today:

“What do you see when you look in a mirror? Go ahead, look. Do you only see wrinkles and sagging skin? Yes, they are there, it’s a fact of the third act, it’s what the body does. And what else? What is reflected in your eyes, your smile?”

In this “third act,” what I’ve been calling “the eldering landscape,” my body is having its say, and I’m having to become more adept at listening. In this year, crossing the threshold into my eighth decade (mind-blowing what becoming seventy actually means!!!) I don’t know how I’ll celebrate. I do know I’ll continue to be enthralled, amazed, bewildered, curious, vulnerable, astonished, uncertain, afraid, grateful, courageous – the whole enchilada of words describing me being in love with the gift that is my life. Regardless of my age.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends.
I’m so happy to welcome you, my newest subscribers, and grateful to you who have been reading me regularly.

A Blessing On …

a kinda sorta valentine heart – Canadian style

a blessing on the meals you cook
as democracy collapses

a blessing on your healing hands
that mend what empire breaks

a blessing on your quiet mornings
when you choose to rise again

a blessing on the stories you preserve
when others would erase them

a blessing on your vigilant heart
beating steady through the storm of cruelty

a blessing on the seeds you scatter
in neglected spaces

a blessing on your fierce protection
of all things small and wild

a blessing on the wisdom you gather
from elders and from earth

a blessing on your careful documentation
of what must not be lost

a blessing on your mutual aid networks
flowering in capitalism’s dank shadow

a blessing on your kitchen table strategies
where sly revolution simmers

a blessing on the wild songs you sing
when courage starts to falter

a blessing on your strategic joy
deployed against despair

a blessing on the future
being born in what you do

a blessing on the bridges you build
between wounded communities

a blessing on your sacred rage
that fuels the work of redemptive justice

a blessing on the hope you sustain
when vulgar bullies assault hope

a blessing on your children’s children
who will know what you defended

a blessing on the future
you dare to imagine now

– Rob Brezsny , Facebook, February 12, 2025

How much worse will it get?
I hardly have words for the rage. The fear. The bitter sadness. The grief of it all.

A book I read decades ago, When Corporations Rule the World (1995). A book written by David C. Korten, in which he shed light on the infracture and policies leading to now. Only now, it’s beyond corporations. We are witnessing the dismantling of the world with a penstroke, at the whim of a few inordinately wealthy, self-serving men.

And so when I don’t have words for the foreboding in my belly, a foreboding shared by many, I am grateful to those who do. I take solace in others’ words that have echoed mine, blessing the future being born in what we each do, dare to imagine, and stand up for now.

Much love and kindest regards, dear friends. May it be a blessed Valentine’s Day.