Friday, June 29, 2012

Children and Water

This week my oldest grand-daughter turned nine. She was very excited about the bike she got from her parents, the notebook she got from her brother and the seashell souvenir I send her every year to mark her birthday.

I love exploring with her the tidal pools on the rocky shoreline near her home on the Atlantic coast. As an artist she loves the colors; as a story-teller she can imagine the drama of the snails and mollusks and other creatures competing or cooperating in their tiny biomes only inches across.

Thursday, June 7, 2012

The Discipline of Compassion

Before I get to today’s theme … here is this week’s exciting news. After three long years in the writing, revising, editing and publication stages, the soft-cover proof copy of Downstream from Eden finally arrived at my door.

With some visiting friends and family, Tiffany and I celebrated with champagne and a prayer of thanksgiving. After a quick inspection I gave the green light to the publishers, and in a few short days both hard-cover and paperback editions will be available from this site. Watch for exact details.

For those who can’t wait, the e-book version is already available on Kindle, fractionally priced at $3.99 which is less than a penny a page, or even better at $3.49 from Kobo Books.

Now, for today’s theme from my list of disciplines for living in the most fully human way in our less-than perfect world --

“The Discipline of Compassion”

There’s a lot of pain in our world – and tears give that pain a poignant human face. Tears are perhaps the most exquisite form of water in the world – tears of suffering or loneliness, tears of grief or lament, tears of sympathy or of regret. And the frequency of tears in the Bible is a clarion call to compassion.