A friend of mine once said, “I lost almost everything, and now I’ve got nothing.” Another friend replied, “We could make something out of that.” I’ve been thinking about those words ever since. Let me tell you a story about stories and the power they have to shape our lives. Whenever we start thinking we have nothing, we’ve stepped through a blind spot and into a trap. The blind spot is real. The trap is an illusion, wrapped in a lie. But we don’t see that. Instead of freeing ourselves and moving along, we stand there dazed, wondering what happened. Then we start making up stories. “It’s my own fault,” we say. “I should have seen it coming.” Our own words make the trap seem real. The stories we tell strengthen the lie. This is not a parable. It happens. I once heard a friend say, “I have nothing because I am nothing.” I was staggered by the number of illusions packed into that remark. But the story he had been telling himself had become …

“Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.”  – Anne Lamott I sit down to write. But nothing comes. Or rather I don’t know how to begin. I look out the window. Mist rises from the mountains. A breeze moves through the trees. Then, a bird crosses the sky. Then another. Then more. Pretty soon there’s hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. Wherever they’ve been all winter, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed them until this very moment. They’re swallows, and they’re back. All at once something swoops through my body the way the swallows dance across sky. As it swoops through, I tremble with it. Then it happens again. As unexpected on this day as the swallows’ return, joy has come back. In its absence, I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed it, until now. Something goes away, and we adapt. Something leaves, and we adjust. Before too long, we come to think of this as normal. We’re fine with less, we say. We’re doing all right, we claim, and sure, we’re …

“What we need are more people who specialize in the impossible.” – Theodore Roethke  The darkness has passed. Light is coming back to the world. In the forest, the impossible transformation is happening again. New life is pushing out of the hard ground. Buds are about to burst into leaf and blossom. A few weeks ago, this seemed unlikely. Yet, there has never been any doubt that it would happen. Forces have been at work below the surface. Even when it seemed that nothing was happening, something was. Why is it so hard for us to believe that these same forces are at work within us, too? I have a friend who once came to believe he’d fallen into a hole. The harder he tried to dig himself out of it, the deeper the hole got. Eventually, he just gave up and made his home there. I have another friend who loved this man so much she’d climb down into that hole every day to sit with him. Sometimes they’d watch a film together. Sometimes they’d play cards. When …

Let everything happen to you Beauty and terror Just keep going No feeling is final ― Rainer Maria Rilke  Let’s say you’ve stepped into a difficult day. Maybe you’ve received news that’s not easy to process. Perhaps a shadow has crossed your consciousness:  a worry, a fear, a sadness. Or let’s say you’ve stepped into a beautiful day. You’re deep in the flow, and every joy is yours. Earlier this week, I stepped into that deep in the flow day full of joy. This morning I stepped into that shadowy day. Tomorrow, who knows what will come? It could be beauty. It could be terror. There could be light. There might be darkness. It all comes, and yet nothing ever stays for long. Twice this week those lines from Rilke have come to mind. The first time it happened, they fell into my hand. I’d opened a book to find I’d written those words on a notecard at some point in the long ago past.  They returned to me like a message from my younger self.  Later, the same words appeared on …