hope – Up the Hill Studio & JJill Gallery

18 May 2024

Walking in the backyard predawn silence of this suburb, I hear the cooing of a mourning dove before any other sound. This year, after several others of seasonal instabilities, the purple clematis bursts grand with a determined hue of strength – this, despite the cool spring temperatures, clouds, rain…

The flowers’ brilliance widens across its trellis, faithful blooms this May in an overshadowed portion of an otherwise unremarkable periphery garden bed.

This moment of color and sound helps me find hope and gratitude in the extensions of a life of questioning, facing this void alone, always seeking to trust. And I’m deeply grateful for the wisdom, kindness, light, and friendship that may pass to me each day, keenly aware of all it means as my arms and heart remain open.

Everywhere

14 April 2024

For some reason, last night was rough – the cold wind, spring trying to break through, daughter’s birthday, questions of where life will be going with this crumbling all around, at home, abroad..Lives in the Balance.

Then I turn on TV in the evening and feel the news that Iran strikes Israel at 4am their time. Escalation? Some retaliation? Thoughts of children and their images imprint on what’s left of my imprisoned mind bring me to supplication and prayers of tears for what’s left of this humanity lost.

Still grateful for a night of almost sleep and quasi rest, I remember 2003 and the public ridicule for warning against war..this…by colleagues and self-defined ‘friends’.

Choosing Nonviolence is a lonely, parched road on forsaken grounds, those of a humanity refusing to see beyond its own reflection. Difficult, oftentimes excruciating, yet, one that assures the spiritual Highground from which we all rise and recede.