You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

           ― John O’Donohue, from “A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted”

Hard as it is for my mom to be away from her fourteen-year-old cocker spaniel for a few hours, let alone three days, she couldn’t bear the thought of not being present for her sister’s grandson’s wedding up north this weekend.  My Aunt Gloria’s been gone for three years.  But this winter, my mother says, has been harder than the first one without her; she is missing her big sister more these days, not less.  Being with her extended family, staying in a hotel with my dad in Newport, watching the first grandson take a bride – none of that would fill in the hole carved by loss, but it would make her feel a bit closer to her sister and remind her she wasn’t alone in missing her.  Of course, she was torn between going and staying home with her dog.

“I’ll come down there and take care of Justin, so you can go to the wedding,” I promised her weeks ago, happy to fill in some empty March days on my calendar with a trip to Florida and grateful for any excuse to have a visit with my mom.

“Words Justin knows (but can’t hear),” she wrote in the extensive care-and-feeding manual she left for me.  “Sit. Stay. Off.”  Justin is sweet-natured, deaf, and, above all else, a creature of routine: up to pee at 5 am, breakfast at 5:03, back to bed til 7, dinner at 4:30, a walk at dusk, playtime, bed.  During the day, between periodic call-of-nature visits to a small circle of bleached crab grass in the backyard, he sleeps.

“I’m looking forward to this,” I assured my mother as she packed her suitcase on Friday.  “I’ve been going nonstop since December. Three days alone, with no one who needs me for anything, will be a luxury.”

I meant it.  It feels as if the only conversation I haven’t had lately is one with myself.  So, I had my own plans for the weekend:  disconnect totally and do nothing.  I would read, think, write in my journal. Allow my soul to welcome me back.

What a relief it would be, I was certain, to just close up shop on my life for a couple of days.  I vowed to take a technology holiday — leave my laptop asleep in its case, my phone on vibrate, my emails unread, incoming texts unanswered, my Facebook status unchanged, my Amazon sales figures unchecked.

Yesterday, all alone in my mother’s house, I erected my cathedral of quiet.

And then, moment by moment, I struggled to live inside it.  All day long, I fought against the uneasy, unfamiliar discomfort of keeping company with my own silent, non-doing self.  How humbling, to realize I’ve lately grown so accustomed to distraction and busyness that it’s a challenge to simply stop in one place and be, to inhabit an empty space in time without giving in to the impulse to fill it up.

For months now, I’ve been in high gear, doing not only my normal every-day stuff (shopping, cooking, cleaning, mothering) but also the adrenaline-rush stuff of traveling, giving readings and talks, connecting, and promoting –  what I’ve come to think of as the job of being a person who’s written a book.  And I’ve loved just about every minute of my own thrilling Magical Journey.  It’s been a privilege to visit bookstores all over the country and a joy to hear from readers, to receive their thoughtful, heartfelt letters, to meet new friends and reconnect with old ones.

At the same time, I have to wonder:  have I become so used to being connected somewhere, to something, all the time, that making a deliberate choice to unplug and shut up, even for a day or two, has become a challenge?

“Stop,” I kept reminding myself yesterday, each time I reflexively reached for my phone, “just to check my email,” until at last I just stuck it out of sight in a drawer.

Pausing just to be sounds simple enough in theory, but it can be wildly hard. Making a choice to inhabit a windswept interior emptiness rather than trying to stuff it full of mental furniture feels awkward, even a little scary.  “Is this all there is?”  my busy mind kept demanding, casting about for something, anything, to do or worry about or fixate upon.

Having grown used to velocity as my automatic response to complexity, I’ve become pretty efficient when it comes to getting things done, but somewhat less graceful, apparently, in repose.  Give me a to-do list, and I know how to power through to the bottom line.  But even competence comes at a cost.  Give me a day without an internet connection or a deadline or a self-imposed goal to be met or a finish line to cross, and all my self-doubts and vulnerabilities come rushing out to meet me, jostling for position, demanding to be seen and heard.

I floundered around for a while, at odds with myself, rubbed raw by the rough edges of my own solitude.  It was hard to sit still, hard even to focus deeply and completely on the pages of the book I very much wanted to read.  I did some yoga and tried to match slow steady breaths to slow steady movements.  I took the dog for a walk, frittered the hours away, spoke to no one.  I didn’t try to get Justin to read my lips, as my mom does, or engage in doggie small talk he couldn’t hear, just to break the silence.  I resisted the urge to email a friend, to text my sons, call my husband, or turn on the TV and catch up on Downton Abbey.

In the end, I stretched out in a lawn chair, put down my book, and gazed up into the turquoise expanse of sky. Finally, time slowed down.  Finally, I felt something inside me begin to soften and settle, to release and let go.

This morning, I’ve been reading a memoir called “Until I Say Good-bye,” by Susan Spencer-Wendell, who was diagnosed with ALS two years ago, at the age of forty-four.  Knowing she had, at best, one good year of life left, Susan made a deliberate choice: to plant a garden of memories for her beloved husband and their three young children, and to cultivate joy in whatever time remained for her.

She wrote her book in three months, painstakingly using her one good finger to type into the Notes function on her iPhone.  By the time she was finished, she had lost her mobility, her voice, nearly everything except her courage, her consciousness, and her conviction that although she had no control over her illness, she could control the attitude she brought to her approaching death.  Certain the greatest gift she can give her family is her own acceptance of her fate, Susan is facing the end head on; as her book makes its way in the world, she is preparing, with little fanfare, to leave it.

Last week, following up on an earlier  interview conducted a few months ago when she could still speak, Scott Simon asked Susan how she is doing.  Her written reply to him was simple, straightforward, tremendously moving: “As well as can be expected. My body and voice become weaker every single day, but my mind becomes mightier and more quiet. You do indeed hear more in silence.”

She is right, of course.  And so, with gratitude now, and a good bit more ease than I felt yesterday, I sit outside at my mother’s quiet house, beneath the rustling palms, and watch the sun go down. I receive John O’Donohue’s words of blessing into my being, and feel what it means to imitate the habit of twilight.  I wonder whether, if I abide here long enough, a well of color might somehow open within me, too, just as the evening sky itself grows diaphanous at last light, the clouds translucent veils of rose and gold and mauve.

 

Magical Journey News

On the web

I never thought much about how my yoga practice has shaped my work as a writer, and vice versa, until Kate Hopper at Motherhood and Words, asked me some probing questions about both craft and practice in this lovely interview.

Other recent interviews and blog posts I’ve loved are:

Ali Edwards’s beautiful review. Click here.

An interview HERE, with Harriet Cabelly at her inspiring and rapidly expanding Rebuild Your Life site.

Amy Makechnie’s  brand new and engaging “fascinating person” series,  HERE.

 

Appearances

There’s a bit more magical journeying in my future, and a few new events on the calendar that I’m very excited about — each one an opportunity to meet wonderful, like-minded women, to listen and share our stories, and to reweave and reaffirm our connections with one another.

Next:  A reading and conversation at the Annapolis Book Festival on April 13 with Donna Jackson Nakazawa, author of The Last Best Cure.  (More about this terrific book, and a give-away, here very soon!) In the meantime, do visit Donna’s website and get to know her there.

It seems to me that the best book conversations (well, the best conversations in general) are the ones that take place over a good meal. So my writing buddy Margaret Roach and I were thrilled to be invited to speak and read at a luncheon hosted by The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, CT, on Friday, April 19.  Details to follow; in the meantime, you can call the store for more info.

I first “met” Priscilla Warner right here last June, when she left a comment on a blog post I’d written.  I immediately read her wonderful memoir Learning to Breathe, she read my manuscript of Magical Journey and encouraged me through every step of the final revision, and pretty soon it felt as if we’d been friends forever — even though we STILL haven’t ever laid eyes on each other.  That will change next month, when I go to Larchmont, NY, to speak at the Public Library  on Sunday, April 19, at 3:30 — an event Priscilla helped organize, in part, so I can finally come visit her.

Other spring-time journeys:

Margaret and I are doing our very last bookstore “duet” at the Concord Bookshop on Sunday, April 28, at 3.  (Think daffodils, home made cookies, and wide-ranging conversation– everything from the thorny questions of midlife to composting secrets revealed!)

I’ll be back at Ann Patchett’s beautiful Nashville bookstore Parnassus on Thursday, May 2, at 7 pm.

And from Nashville, I’ll go straight to Minneapolis for my final two readings this spring: The annual Motherhood and Words talk at the Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 4 and, finally, to cap it all off, a reading at Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor’s beloved bookstore in downtown St. Paul on Monday, May 6.  Minneapolis friends, St. Olaf connections, Twin Cities readers, I want to see you all there! 

As always, HUGE thanks to all of you who are creating this community of like-minded souls and keeping the word of mouth going by writing reviews on Amazon, showing my video to your friends, or sharing my blog posts on your Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.  Every week, this newsletter is going out to more people — there are well over 2,ooo subscribers now, but I’d love to widen this circle even more.  My Magical Journey Facebook page, which started with exactly zero followers in November, now has nearly 2500.  (That really DOES feel like magic.)

 

 

There are people, many of them dear friends of mine, who can’t wait to sit down alone and shape their thoughts and feelings into sentences and paragraphs. I so wish I were one of them. There are some who have learned to trust their creative process, others who entertain a muse, some who simply feel most alive when they are creating. I am not any of these people, either.

For me, writing is a slow, halting journey from experience to thought to written word. It is a wonder I do it at all, given how inefficiently I travel, and how adept I am at coming up with countless more “productive” ways to spend my time. Show me a sink full of dirty dishes to address, or a few emails to answer, or an 8 a.m. yoga class, and all my mental synapses go into flight and alight mode. My house is never cleaner than when I have a deadline, my yoga practice never stronger than when I’m in the middle of a writing project. Here in Florida, in my mom’s back bedroom, flight is not an option. I came all the way down here to sit in a chair and fight my own little battle with myself.

Last week my friend, the extraordinary (and extraordinarily prolific) author Beth Kephart wrote this about the craft of memoir: “We are speaking about how we shape what we have lived, what we have seen. About how we honor what we love and defend what we believe in. Makers of memoir dwell with ideas and language, with themselves. They counter complexity with clarity. They locate a story inside the contradictions of their lives—the false starts and the presumed victories, the epiphanies that rub themselves raw nearly as soon as they are stated.”

Dwelling with myself. That really is my challenge. It is so much easier, so much more tempting, to turn away, to get busy doing something else, to skim along on the surface of my life instead of stopping, sitting still, going inside, and going deep. To write, or to read, about the inner life is to believe that what we think and how we feel matters. To be a friend of memoir is to stake a claim for the significance of the examined life. It is to say that our inner narratives are as important as the activities and achievements, the successes and failures, that fill our days. It is to say that locating the story within the contradictions of our lives is a worthy pursuit.

“We read,” wrote C. S. Lewis. “to remember that we are not alone.” It is also why we write. To remember that we have much to learn from our most difficult conversations with ourselves and with each other. And that in sharing the truth of who we are and how we struggle, we remind another struggling someone that they do not journey alone.

Thanks to all of you who contributed suggestions to the “Wholeheartedness” playlist. Next week my in-house tech support son, Henry, will be home. Together, we’ll compile the list and post it here. Till then, feel free to add your favorite songs. (I’ve been listening to the ones I didn’t know and I have to say, I think we’re on to something: it’s a great list of heart-opening, uplifting music!)

Jack sat on the sofa, tackling one short essay after another on the Common App and various college supplements, while I perched at the table, reading on-line submissions for a panel I’m on next week. Between essays, he would chat with me about possible angles he might take, and then he’d go outside to shoot hoops in the driveway for ten minutes and think things through.

Essentially, Jack’s challenge was the same one every other high school senior we know is wrestling with at the moment: How to present himself in words to complete strangers who will then all-too-briefly compare him to thousands of other unique, gifted kids competing for the same spots in next year’s incoming freshman class. Of course, I have no one with whom to compare my son; I’m reading just one college application, not a thousand. And, as his mother, I’m about as far from an objective judge as I could be. But I was struck, nevertheless, by the depth of his thinking and the range of experiences that have contributed to the construction of his eighteen-year-old self.

By late that night, he’d answered one question with a sonnet, written an honest, thoughtful essay about the difficult but valuable lessons he learned from getting suspended from high school, tried to compress two summers of work he’s passionate about into a thousand characters, and described how his environment growing up has influenced the person he is today.

As Jack emailed his work from his computer across the room to mine, and we zapped edited versions back and forth, I couldn’t help but marvel at  the ease and efficiency of the process. Thanks to the wonders of the digital age, we could work independently yet side by side in the coziest, most companionable room in the house. At the same time, I found myself thinking of the role that technology has — and has not — played in shaping the multi-faceted picture of my son that emerged from his day of writing and reflection.

The next day, an article in the Boston Globe, titled “Trying to Gauge the Effects of Growing up Digital” caught my eye. “A few clicks, a couple of swipes,” it begins, “and Bridget Colvin’s four- and-a half year old son, August, was tapping away on an iPad smudged with tiny fingerprints.” The author goes on to point out that “there is little doubt we are seeing only the early stages of a hyper-connected world that is changing childhood.” The images brought the point home: toddlers swiping fingers across board books, expecting the characters to come to “life;” parents handing their iPhones to fussy babies to quiet them; one-year-olds adeptly playing “Baby Birds,” a version of “Angry Birds” for the Pre-K set; three-year-olds skillfully surfing for videos on YouTube; a description of Fisher-Price’s hot new toy, the $15 Laugh & Learn Apptivity Case, an “oversize iPhone case that doubles as a baby rattle.” Since the toy was released last month, Amazon has been unable to keep it in stock; the most popular app for the case, “Where’s Puppy’s Nose,” has been downloaded more than 700,000 times.

My son Jack never was never an “easy” child; active, curious, sensitive, bright, he struggled to find his place in a world that often seemed too overwhelming. Learning how to be at ease in this world, physically and emotionally, and how to live in it fully, has always been his greatest challenge. Confronting that challenge through all the years of his childhood and adolescence, he has suffered, matured, and, in the end, blossomed.

I can’t help but wonder what kind of young adult Jack would be today had he been offered an early escape route from his complicated feelings. How would he have developed had he been able to lose himself in an app at age three or four, instead of having to negotiate the complex emotional and tactile stimulation that life continually threw at him? Would he have learned resilience if he’d been able to tune out the intensity of real experience by tuning in to an animated wonderland instead? What would feel important to him now, if he had spent the hours of his early childhood having interactive adventures in front of computer screens, instead of getting into mischief and experiencing the painful consequences? Who would he be, if he hadn’t been a boy who grew up playing in the backyard with his friends, laying on the couch under an afghan sounding out the words to “Frog and Toad,” learning to do math by collecting a hundred acorns during an autumn walk, and then adding and subtracting them into piles?

I got a disturbing glimpse of the answer to some of those questions a couple of years ago, when Jack became so enamored with video games for a while — and then so good at them – that he eschewed the real world of relationships and heartache and expectations, for a virtual one that he could create and control at will. It seemed like a perfect match up – his lightening quick brain and extraordinary hand-eye coordination made him really, really great at video games. But the more hours he put in in front of the screen, progressing through increasingly difficult levels of exceedingly complicated games, the more his ability and willingness to engage in the challenges of the real world atrophied. He lost the concentration necessary to read deeply, lost interest in homework, quit sports, pulled back from school and friends. For the better part of a difficult year, he was physically home but emotionally absent.

For Jack, making the hard choice to endure the emotional ups and downs of reality rather than escape into an alluring alternative universe, has turned out to be a formative, life-altering experience. He had to figure out how to use technology constructively, of course, as a tool with which to work, rather than as a substitute for life. But, just as important, he also had to figure out how to build a sustaining, meaningful friendship with himself — at the very moment of adolescence when we humans are often most desperate to escape from ourselves. And, because we had moved from the suburbs, where he was surrounded by friends and neighbors, to the relative isolation of the country, that friendship with himself has had to sustain him through many long, solitary hours.

“Life in rural New Hampshire was as lonely as I predicted,” Jack wrote in one essay (I quote with his permission). “The driveway was dirt and undribble-able and while the lawn was big enough for a complete baseball diamond, there weren’t any players around. Being alone with my thoughts was uncomfortable; I’d never had to be alone in my life. But in the midst of my sadness, I began to grow up. I became more creative with the ways that I entertained myself. I spent time drawing, reading, inventing card games and playing the guitar, as well as just sitting and thinking.

In my pensive misery as a twelve-year-old it dawned on me that I would never become the self- sufficient, creative person I wanted to be if I couldn’t even enjoy my own company. I would continue to distract myself with all of the problems around me and never face my own. Although I’m a social person by nature and love spending time with good friends, I owe the security I have in myself to learning how to become my own best friend, in the quiet countryside of New Hampshire.”

Jack and I talked about all this as I drove him back to school last week, where he’s taking a demanding senior-year course load and has decided to try out for the varsity basketball team – despite the fact that he’s spent the last two winter seasons playing squash. He’s been playing basketball for hours a day all fall, just for the fun of it. So, he started working out, lifting weights, running, practicing his jump shot, as a challenge to himself; whether or not he actually makes the team is less important to him than the pleasure he’s found in the discipline of trying.

As Jack would be the first to admit, just a couple of years ago, in the midst of his video-game obsession, he wouldn’t have taken on the challenge of making the team, nor would he have risked the disappointment of rejection. Now, having come to understand himself more fully, he’s realized that it’s by actively engaging in the physical world that he connects with his happiest, best self. Fortunately, when he decided he’d had his fill of video games, he had a “self” to return to, a work-in-progress self to be sure, but one that had been shaped by an early childhood without much access to TV or movies or computers.

Having spent his formative years with no choice but to learn to live in his own body and be entertained by his own imagination, he had plenty of “real world” experiences and skills to build on, some familiarity with the pleasure of making things, getting lost in a book, or climbing a mountain. Thinking about this, putting it into words on a form on his computer, he couldn’t help but wonder what life, and adolescence, might be like for a boy of his temperament coming of age in this next generation.

Having watched Jack’s journey these last eighteen years, I wonder, too. If you grow up with a gadget in the palm of your hand, do you ever develop an inner life? If large portions of your first years on earth are spent online, will you ever make contact with that sacred entity within that guides you toward your full potential as a human being? If you’re an expert at surfing the web by age three, will you ever discover the pleasure of crocheting a hat, building a snow fort, or laying on the grass and staring up at the sky? If there is no silence in your mind, no quiet place in your heart, no true solitude in your soul, do you ever hear the voice within?

We don’t have the answers to these questions; they will be revealed by the next generation of children, the ones who are happily tapping away at iPhones in their car seats. But I think it’s interesting that my eighteen-year-old son, who is a self-taught whiz on the computer, is worried about those kids. And I’m glad to hear him say that he’s grateful now for the low-tech early childhood he had – even the loneliness, even the boredom, even the hard parts.

Jack has one more essay to write, and he’s chosen the topic: mastery for the sake of mastery. In it he wants to write about the pleasure he’s found over the years in teaching himself all kinds of random, mostly useless but deeply satisfying skills: how to do the Rubik’s cube, skip stones across a pond, flip an omelet, climb rocks, hit a wicket shot in tennis, recite Hamlet’s soliloquy, juggle five balls at a time, play “Purple Haze” on the guitar.

Like I said, I’m not a very objective judge, but I think he’s ready for college.

Further reading: a related and fascinating article on the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, about the growth of low-tech Waldorf schools in the high-tech epicenter, Silicon Valley. Also, a recent piece in, of all places, Fast Company, about the disappearance of down-time.

The dictionary defines it thus: “an unjustifiable absence.” It seemed to me that the golden afternoon was justification enough. Summer was offering an unexpected encore, free to all takers. My husband Steve and our friend Nance met me on the trail and, with the dogs bounding ahead, we climbed up to a quiet clearing with a view of mountains, a place we call “the meditation chairs.” Over many years, visitors to this spot have assembled hundreds of stones large and small into an arrangement of artful cairns and comfortable seats that invite revery and repose and reflection. It was a perfect place to sit for a while, savoring this glorious, unseasonally balmy Monday.

Nance and I looked at each other as we headed back down the trail and we both had the same thought at the same time: would it be crazy to go swimming? We went from the mountain straight to the pond, smooth as glass in the waning afternoon. There was nothing to do but peel off our clothes and plunge. The slap of cold was small price to pay for the exhilaration of slicing through that icy black water, straight out to the middle of the lake, and then turning to look back at hills soaked in color, the empty beach, the resplendent stillness. We swam to shore shivering, exultant, grateful.

When our boys were young, a full moon on a clear night was always a good excuse for sleeping outdoors, but it has been years now since I’ve done it. The truth is, I haven’t been quite ready to return, alone or even with my husband, to some of those cherished traditions that were so much a part of our family life. My greatest joy as a mother was to introduce my children to the world, to lead them gently into wonder, to provide an abundant harvest of experiences that would stir their senses and quicken their imaginations – walks in the woods, nights under the stars, stories told by firelight, hushed sunrises and barefoot walks through dew-soaked grass. Now that they are grown, I miss those times more than I can say. I miss my sons as the little boys they were, much as I love and admire the young men they have become. And I miss the joy of our shared play, the sense of adventure that infused our days and nights, the fun of dragging air mattresses and sleeping bags out into the backyard on a moment’s notice and cuddling up together beneath a vast canopy of stars. I miss seeing the world through a child’s eyes.

I’m also realizing that herein lies one of the great challenges of this new phase of my life as a woman whose child-raising days have ended: to learn all over again to see the world through my own eyes. I want to look and feel deeply now not just for my sons’ sake, but for myself. And to remember that this life, these days, are not just thrilling for young children, but for me, too. To live well on the earth means to inhabit gently its fields and streams and wild places, to praise its magnificent abundance and variety, to protect its treasures, to celebrate its beauty even as we honor our own playful spirits, no matter how old or how young we are.

Now that I have no little boys to take by the hand and lead out into the wonderful morning, it’s easy for me to get so caught up in the doings and details of my “grown-up” life that I miss the soft curve of a day, the gentle approach of evening, the first wink of stars at twilight. I forget to pause long enough to savor the miracles of creation that are right in front of me. But it’s time for me to pay closer attention to this world now for my own soul’s sake; indeed, to partake of its wonders myself just as I once offered them to my children. It is such a simple thing, really, to sit, to look, to see, to cherish. The harvest moon, certainly, is always worthy of celebration and homage, whether one is five or fifty.

And so, I pitched my small tent on the crest of our hill last night and unrolled my sleeping bag. I lit a fire under the stars, listened to the coyotes yipping in the field below, watched the beneficent moon inscribe her graceful arc through the night. When I awoke this morning, my hair damp with dew, the first streaks of crimson were just appearing on the horizon. I lay alone in my tiny tent, silent, serene, looking out across the mountains with a heart full of gratitude — for all that was, and also for all that is. This world. This life. This day.

Thank you, dear friends, for the week full of wonderful birthday wishes and, too, for sharing the precious gifts of your lives with me. I cherish your comments and am in awe of the power of words to bring us close, to weave such marvelous threads of connection through our hearts and minds.

“Solitude is the soul’s holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead.”

—  Katrina Kenison

It’s the first day I’ve been alone for three weeks.  Henry left for a month in London on Monday.  Then I drove Jack back to school and got home last night in time for a late dinner and bed.  This morning: silence.  I’m feeling a little blue, sad that these weeks of intense family togetherness have come to an end. The to-do list awaits and the house needs a good post-holiday cleaning from top to bottom. No one is asking for pancakes.

I remind myself that my boys are off doing exactly what they should be doing, out in the world.  And I am alone here, with a pile of work put off  until January and  a choice to make.  I can give in to loneliness and letdown as I strip sheets off beds and clean out the refrigerator, or I can allow myself  a little mini-vacation of the spirit, the pleasure of appreciating my own company.  The chance to take a deep breath, begin to catch up with myself, and create something new in this new year.

I tell myself that after a couple of weeks of cooking, talking, negotiating, joking, cajoling, laughing, and just generally focusing all of my time and attention and energy outward, it will feel good to pause and be still.  To turn inward and reconnect with my own quiet center.

And so, feeling a little radical, I even resist the urge to turn on my computer this morning, savoring instead a more complete aloneness than the internet will allow.  I have a cup of coffee, kiss my husband good-bye, do some yoga,  watch the sky brighten.  Gradually, my heart lightens, too.

And then I flip open my laptop, start looking through my e-mail backlog from the last week or so, and find this quote waiting for me, sent by a reader.  “Did you see,” she wrote in her note from December 27, “you were Oprah’s quote of the day.”  Sure enough, there is my name, beneath these words I have no memory of ever writing.

Slowly, it comes back to me.  Ten years ago, I wrote an article for the Oprah magazine about solitude.  This, I realize, is what I must have said back then.  As if I had it all figured out.  It does sound kind of wise and knowing. But this morning, a decade and change later, I’ve had to learn the truth of these words all over again, as if I had never written them at all.

It must just be that we mortals never really get life all figured out.  The brain may be overachieving and whip-smart, but the soul is a remedial, wayward student, forever forgetting yesterday’s lessons.  I’ve always known that one reason I write is to remind myself to do as I say.  Now, I’m also realizing that I have to keep learning and practicing the same things over and over again — silence, patience, acceptance, faith, gratitude for what is — until slowly, bit by bit, what I know to be true becomes who I am.  To say that it’s a process is an understatement.  It is, I suppose, the work of a lifetime.

Important Note to Readers:

I am so grateful to all of you who have visited this new site, subscribed to my blog posts, and left comments here for me to read.  It really has been like moving into a new house — a bit before I should have been handed a certificate of occupancy.  As it turned out, the subscription button wasn’t working until yesterday, and the RSS feed was being temperamental too.  I think we finally have things worked out, but this blog is the true test.  If you subscribed last week, you’ve missed a post.  But I trust you are reading this one in your e-mail.  If you subscribed to my old site’s RSS feed, you will have to subscribe again on the new website.  If you have GoogleReader, you may need to resubscribe as well.  Any problems whatsoever, please let me know!  We’re getting there.