Tension.  Anxiety.  Worry.  My own load is invisible, but  it’s definitely been taking a toll.  This week I learned that while I’ve been stretching my spine in downward dog, practicing deep breathing in meditation, walking the back roads of New Hampshire with a grateful heart, I’ve also been clenching my jaw.  Clenching so hard and so fiercely and for so long, that I’ve cracked my back teeth and pushed my bite out of alignment as a result.   It took my dad the dentist to figure it out, after I’d called him for the fifth morning in a row to…

A young father lay dying.  Our sons, then in third grade together, had been playmates since kindergarten.  When word came that Richard was ill, I’d brought soup to the door, then lemon cake.  Such small gestures; just a way to say, “I am thinking of you.”  One day I stayed on to chat with Richard in the quiet house, and later his wife Jane called and asked if perhaps I could come again.   So it was that in the midst of my busy life with two small children, I was invited to pause, and to draw close to death….