Embracing the Quiet Here, no summer waves crash against the shore. This time of year, the air is still. There is no illusion. Bodies will not warm in eternal sunshine. Instead, I find solace in the rugged beauty of the North. The landscape is wild and formidable. Lake Tanker Country stretches before me, yet even here, the elements remain huddled along our shore. It is a reminder of nature’s power and our smallness within it. I want to share an excerpt from my first book, a re

They’ve left so many times before, this child of mine. Off to take each impatient step, uncertain at first, gathering steam. Always away, towards eager participation in life’s array of challenges and delectables. Coming home, A backward turn, Moments of definition when I know I am not their rock but their resting place. Grace-notes they offer, tributes to memory, the time I have invested. Gracious glances before moving on. Privileged knowing, never forgotten, a trust I have

He walks with You. He finds you on the shore, chases away the cruel and callous who bring stones of grief and guilt and shame. He welcomes you. From the heart of the universe, from the dawn of time’s beginning, He multiples whatever meager faith you have. So spend the day, Stay awhile, Dwell for a time.

Softly Water teases the shore. Midnight embraced. The fawn’s gentle passage Across the divide between Sea and space. Gently it massages The overwrought mind. It plays with fancy And caresses the Worry from out of the day. It can rise, water that splits the rock. On wild, stormy days, Untamed it crashes And builds for yet Another assault. Power, magnitude, Roiling, unbridled, Its music is loud And pitched. Wave upon wave, Unapologetic, Insistent, Grand. Majesty tethered

In this particular time, we need templates from what has gone on before. I turn to Ernest Shackleton. In January 1915, his ship was trapped in pack ice one day's journey from his intended landing site. In October of that same year, 9 months later, he and his men are forced to abandon his ship, the Endurance. In November, they watch as the vessel breaks apart, crushed in vise-like seas of moving ice. Living on a shifting ice floe, they cobble together Patience Camp. It wa

Warbling up great canyons, drifting over silent spaces of time. When the moon fills, when the night is soft, loon laughter transforms wildness into song. It calls to another. It dances on the webbed feet of the wind. It mates whispering silence to sound, reckless and uninhibited, primitive and unbroken, indigenous, rowdy, untouched. Loon laughter echoes proudly over the hills. It seeps into the cracks of untamed places. It is reluctant to go to domesticated venues. It watc

FOR ANYONE going through the sometimes choppy waters of change. Hope you enjoy it! John “The land had been well named. It was the weather breeder of Canada. From it came powerful winds and unpredictable storms, all the more vicious because of their suddenness.” Sigurd F. Olson, The Lonely Land This is November, a time famous for gales sweeping down from Canada or across from Michigan and Wisconsin. Our skies are grey and surly. There is plenty of wintry weather on the march

THE QUIET POETRY OF GRIEF We offer our anger, fear, sadness, raging confusion, a torrent of tears—bereaved knife-wounding pain to You. We wait and watch for a flicker of communion, hope, reunion. We lack an answer. We labor alone. I t seldom occurs to us we are already in the early morning hours, waiting for first-light to come upon us. If these words meet you in a hard season— you are not alone. This reflection appears in my collection Meditations for the Untethered: Fr

Confronting What We Fear So vast the distance between human kind. So fractured the sense of right and wrong. So vaulted our fears, So tested our trying, Disheartened. We drift along, a sailor’s dream, Bounty on the other shore. But the maps might be a fiction As winds grow slack, And storm clouds gather On almost every horizon. We tease at the margins of life, But turmoil arises within. We are dissatisfied, apprehensive, The seams of heritage torn, A future made of gauze.