Magical Memoir Moments
What Does Work Mean to You? Reporting a Facebook Response
Since I quoted from Carl Jung last time, it’s only fair to quote one of Sigmund Freud’s most famous sayings: “Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.” Lately, I’ve been musing about these two subjects of love and work in a series of posts on family, home, and change. You can find them listed…
Dancing with Change: A Mini-Memoir
As you may have guessed by now, the December and January posts on this blog are more about issues related to my current life than about the subject of memoir per se. That’s because Stuart and I are in the midst of major post-mid-life changes. Of course, these changes are relevant to the subject of…
What is Your Work: Is It Love Made Visible?
I am a child of the sixties, having graduated from high school in 1966 and college in 1970. Everyone in those days seemed to be reading The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran. We read the selection on marriage at a wedding sometime in the early ’70’s: I had not reread The Prophet for years until I…
Home for the Holidays Part III: What Does Home Mean to YOU?
I have been thinking a lot about houses and the idea of home for the last month. Moving from Michigan to Virginia at age 62 has stimulated introspection. I am no longer at home in Goshen, IN, the place where I spent most of my adult life, or Kalamazoo, MI, the place that nurtured us…
Home for the Holidays Part II: The Soundtrack of the Journey
Our moving day was Wednesday, Dec. 3, 2010. We left Kalamazoo, MI, around 4 p.m. after the two moving vans had already headed east. Our first stop was with Stuart’s brother Hollis and his wife Marty in Ann Arbor. They toasted our transition with a champagne dinner. In the morning after a quick breakfast, they…
The Nature of Creative Transformation: Three Views on Video
Michael Jones, Lauren Artress, and Jen Louden discuss the nature of transformation–and its relationship to art and the artist. Do you think everyone is creative? What do you do allow your creative side to flourish?
What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? Kind!
Poet and master teacher Jack Ridl tells a story about an encounter with a boss that shaped his whole life. Again, from the 2010 Writer’s Retreat at the Fetzer Institute. The Dalai Lama has said, “My religion is kindness.” A few years ago, I wrote an essay about the desire of a young Amish boy…
Creative Beginnings Video with Michael Jones and Conrad Hilberry: From A Head Nodder
For Canadian pianist and writer Michael Jones, one of the participants in the April 2010 writer’s retreat at the Fetzer Institute, music and words brought him joy from an early age. Kalamazoo College professor emeritus Conrad Hilberry developed his artistic talents a little later in life. This video reminds me that one can listen deeply…
Paulus Berensohn: Why We Create
Paulus Behrenson was another remarkable participant in last April’s Writer’s Retreat at the Fetzer Institute. He has created within so many art forms, he may have lost track of some of them. He’s not counting, anyway. But he’s an ecologist, potter, poet, dancer, and philosopher. He was interviewed on ABC in 2003. I highly recommend…