5 Minute Read
As Simon Sinek reminds us, the games we play can be either finite or infinite. But what happens when we lose track?
1 min read
Say the Change
Declarations of Being & Becoming
1 min read
When’s Your Tide?
If, as my mother taught me, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, from what fictional materials must the journey not taken be made? (more…)
1 min read
When’s Your Time?
Beginning seven hundred years ago, young people were apprenticed to a master until they could come into their own as skilled workers and contributors. Today, we use terms like 'intern' and 'trainee' to describe an apprentice system that prepares its graduates for positions of choice and accountability. (more…)
1 min read
When’s Your Turn?
When leading a meeting or presentation, it's never a bad idea to consider that your busy audience might have been tempted to skip it. To recapture their attention, prepare your remarks as if listeners were in the middle of the biggest crisis of their week and only you possess the information they need to get through it. (more…)
1 min read
When’s Your Truck?
When pondering the future, it might sometimes seem easier just to let the present take us there, no questions asked. Fortunately, if awkward, even painful, the world has a way of begging certain questions. And when it does, maybe we should think twice before choosing not to answer them. (more…)
1 min read
When’s Your Train?
Remember that proverbial squirrel spinning its heart out inside the black box of anything that is mysteriously mobile? If Erwin Schrödinger was right, before looking under the lid, there's an equal chance the mysterious power source is something else entirely. (more…)
1 min read
Just Open a Vein
6 Minute Read
[For Sotir] Douglas Thayer, a beloved mentor of whom I have written more than once, held that no one, including his own spouse, ever wants to read what writers have to say about writing. “Writers should be read and not heard,” was how he put it. Doug, if heaven has eyes for this sort of thing, please forgive what you are about to read.
1 min read
When’s Your Train?
4 Minute Read
Remember that proverbial squirrel spinning its heart out inside the black box of anything that is mysteriously mobile? If Erwin Schrödinger was right, before looking under the lid, there’s an equal chance the mysterious power source is something else entirely.
1 min read
When’s Your Time?
3 Minute Read
Beginning seven hundred years ago, young people were apprenticed to a master until they could come into their own as skilled workers and contributors. Today, we use terms like ‘intern’ and ‘trainee’ to describe an apprentice system that prepares its graduates for positions of choice and accountability.
1 min read
When’s Your Tide?
4 Minute Read
If, as my mother taught me, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, from what fictional materials must the journey not taken be made?
1 min read
When’s Your Turn?
3 Minute Read
When leading a meeting or presentation, it’s never a bad idea to consider that your busy audience might have been tempted to skip it. To recapture their attention, prepare your remarks as if listeners were in the middle of the biggest crisis of their week and only you possess the information they need to get through it.
1 min read
When’s Your Truck?
3 Minute Read
When pondering the future, it might sometimes seem easier just to let the present take us there, no questions asked. Fortunately, if awkward, even painful, the world has a way of begging certain questions. And when it does, maybe we should think twice before choosing not to answer them.
1 min read
Say It Again, Sam
18 Minute Read
In which I follow up last month’s post by asking the question: Where’s Yours?
1 min read
Say the Change
14 Minute Read
In which I begin a weekly newsletter by asking the question: What’s Yours?
1 min read
If Memory Serves
9 Minute Read
Or How the Brain Makes Room for the Mind Like a Seurat painting, incremental change appears on the scene point by point. Trusting the big picture to take care of itself once our entire canvas has been thoughtfully dotted, we free our minds to focus on adding new colors.
1 min read
Without a Whisper
< 1 Minute Read
(Remembering Maui)
1 min read
Breakfast Prayer with Daddy
12 Minute Read
Or the Problem of Ethics in the Dark I learned the story of Cain and Abel around the time my younger brother and I were expected to share our first bin of Legos. After my five-year-old brain worked out how I could possess his half of my inheritance without getting caught, I conceived a plan to eliminate both “Abel” and the all-seeing God who would surely question “Cain” after the deed was done.
1 min read
Outbroken
14 Minute Read
[For Karl] When the knell tolls, like a scatter of pebbles across this archipelago of human being, its resonant frequency finds its way into not just my heart but yours beating but a stone’s throw away.
1 min read
Bone on Bone
11 Minute Read
Thomas Aquinas argues for deliberate will. René Descartes thinks and therefore is. Celine Dion belts My Heart Will Go On. But sometimes, the body just does stuff.
1 min read
If on a Summer’s Eve a Writer
8 Minute Read
[For Mark] From a child, I would, on rare occasions, look at a thing and sense from it a timeless, ineffable outreach. “Look at me. Notice me. Remember me. You’ll wish you had.”
1 min read
Leapin’ Leopards!
8 Minute Read
Want to change your spots? Not until we see the past for the feral creature it is and, with trepidation, let it into our house, train it not to bite our guests, and give it its own dish will we reduce the odds its jaws will one day spring back upon our necks.
1 min read
Restoration
11 Minute Read
When I dug into the recursive transformation of one of my dad’s revisionist paintings, it occurred to me that when we care for it the way a painter revisits an old canvas, the past is liberated to leap forward into its own future.
1 min read
The Laughing Man Who Fell Off His Chair and Other Indirections
9 Minute Read
Or How Orson Scott Card Taught Me to Understand Shakespeare Without Uttering a Word