psalms on Transience

Transition is one of the givens in our lives, and we only live well, we only manage our lives well, when we manage these transitions well. Our world changes; the circumstances of our lives change. The...

At their core, transitions are the internal adjustments by which we reorient ourselves to new environments, new experiences, and new seasons of life.

It isn't the changes that do you in, it's the transitions. Change is not the same as transition. Change is situational: the new site, the new boss, the new team roles, the new policy. Transiti...

The Messy Middle In his classic work Transitions, author and professor William Bridges shares an excellent anecdote about life in crisis: it can happen at any time and in a myriad of ways. It also de...

Life and time are ghosted creatures for us all. They belong to us—and are not ours at the same time.

Have you ever heard of "Stein’s Law"? Named after University of Virginia economics professor Herbert Stein, it states: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop." Do you...

One of the dangers of living in a constant state of distraction is that we never go to the bottom of our pain, our sadness, our emptiness, which means we never find that rock-bottom place of the peace...

This is the end - for me the beginning of life.

See the leaves around us falling, Dry and withered to the ground; Thus to thoughtless mortals calling, In a sad and solemn sound "Youth on length of days presuming, Who the paths of pleasure tre...

I would later learn that these are two characteristics of beauty: it never stays, and it never fully satisfies.

After the fall of our first parents, boundaries were something to push past, to transgress. It’s worth pausing to note how we use the word transgression for “sin.”  With its Latin roots, “across” and ...

To enter into the realm of contemplation one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we...

Poet Donald Hall told the story of a hermit in New Hampshire, a man who passed away leaving behind sheds full of hoarded stuff. In one of the sheds was a box labeled, “string too short to be saved.” ...

After the fall of our first parents, boundaries were something to push past, to transgress. It’s worth pausing to note how we use the word transgression for “sin.”  With its Latin roots, “across” and ...

‘Space’ means an area of freedom, without coercion or accountability, free of pressures and void of authority. Space may be imagined as week-end, holiday, a vacation, and is characterised by a kind of...

Life is short, and we do not have much time to gladden the hearts of those who are traveling the dark journey with us. Oh, be swift to love, make haste to be kind.

Cultural commentator Richard Sennett has claimed that the primary architectural emblem of contemporary life is the airport departure lounge.

People in a hurry never have time for recovery. Their minds have little time to meditate and pray so that problems can be put in perspective. In short, people in our age are showing signs of physiolog...

On retreat we stop avoiding the pain of the disconnect between our deepest desires and the way we are actually living. We have time and space to reflect on our life rhythms to see if they are really w...

Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.

Time is too slow for those who wait, too swift for those who fear, too long for those who grieve, too short for those who rejoice, but for those who love, time is eternity

Smartphones make it possible for the attention economy to target our little attention gaps as we transition between tasks and duties. Our attention may be slightly elastic enough to fill up every empt...

Perhaps we look to a screen because it’s too painful to remember we are mortal. To sit in our limits and let them wash over us. To embrace this body, this moment in time, this feeling, or this place. ...

The way to love anything is to realize that it may be lost.

The other thing that helps me deal with my compulsion to control things through my direct involvement and my fear of missing out is what Henri Nouwen has called “the ministry of absence.” Jesus modele...

Survival requires more than the basic biological necessities we readily acknowledge—oxygen, food, and water. It also demands something less tangible but equally vital: hope. When hope vanishes, the hu...

Everydayness is my problem. It’s easy to think about what you would do in wartime, or if a hurricane blows through, or if you spent a month in Paris, or if your guy wins the election, or if you won th...

There is a helplessness in poverty that precedes the move of God in our lives because we understand an aspect of grace that so many miss: we do nothing to earn it. When we understand this, all becomes...

Leftovers in their less visible form are called memories. Stored in the refrigerator of the mind and the cupboard of the heart.

My friend Wendy calls the incremental disappointments we endure over the years “the slow leak of life.”