I’ve now been writing on the Substack platform for a few years. My older posts will still be here on the website, but new posts will appear on my Substack page. That’s the link. If you subscribe over there, you’ll automatically receive my new posts when they are published. If you want to stay subscribed only here, I’ll try to keep this page updated with current links as I post new blogs. Thanks for continuing the journey with me!
Time to follow up … about the thing we thought the thing would be.
And here’s where we’re headed!
It has been a couple of weeks since, after months of rumination, I shared a concept for developing a regular podcast. Thank you to those of you who responded and let me know what you thought about the idea. Most who did were positive and I appreciate your feedback.
It’s time to take a look at what the response actually was and how I plan to go forward from here. Again, thank you to those of you who responded. Read more on Substack.
Out for feedback …. for which I am almost always grateful
Well, here you go! The concept for the podcast!
This, my friends, has been a wrestling match! As you well know, it has taken MONTHS to figure out what I think I might talk about on a podcast. Throughout the process, I’ve learned several things I really don’t want to do, played with a few ideas of things I might do, and thrown out almost all of them, and felt your presence and support. I am grateful to you all. …Read more on Substack
Challenging conversation … to talk or not to talk
We all find ourselves in challenging conversations from time to time. Some of us grew up in households where the dinner table was an arena for explorations of accountability, responsibility, suitability, and respect, the children not only included but often the reason such conversations took place. Some heard our parents having conversations over the phone. Unable to hear the other side, however, we were left guessing what was happening to whom, when, why, and “Is there somewhere we can go to watch?” …Read more on Substack
Change … the flora, the future, and us
Late in September, Scott and I drove from Ontario to Nova Scotia along the Trans-Canada Highway and returned mid-October. The 1,330 km drive takes two days each way but runs through some of the most beautiful scenery Canada has to offer. Throughout the entire journey, despite being on high alert for deer and moose, we found ourselves captivated by the changing colours of the forests, and the blasted rock roadsides telling the stories of upheaval, time, and change that made these lands what they are. New Brunswick, itself, has some of the most diverse and significant geology in the world, spanning continents and aeons. Through the chance circumstance of our births, we are allowed to fill and soothe our hearts with the beauty of this land. What an amazing gift. … Read more on Substack
In this kind of time … Embracing the courage to see one another
Thank you so much for being here. For being and for being here, with me as I wonder about the world and where it’s headed. And for being here with one another as we try to do this in community, and then take our mindful meanderings out into the important relationships we each have beyond this platform and this particular blog. You’re here doing the most important thing any of us can do in times like these (and when has there ever been another kind of time?): engaging, reading to become informed, considering, responding, creating and holding together something that bears the semblance of family, of community, perhaps simply a holding space so meaningful engagement might take place. … Read more on Substack
It has been a wild summer, and I haven’t managed to get nearly as far on my podcast project as I would have liked. A friend introduced me to Adobe podcast which makes me sound like a professional, and I’ve done several recordings just to get used to the platform. I’ve also begun reading portions of my published materials so that I can use clips of them here or there, when they might be helpful. After much wrestling with the concept of what the program would actually look like, an outline that I’m feeling really good about has finally emerged. Read on …
I have never been one to snap pictures when I’m with other people. Not a selfie with my arm around someone. No huge smile with an iconic statue barely visible over my shoulder. Very few photos of the people I was in ministry with for decades. Not a lot of evidence that Scott and I have travelled together or the people we have met there, though there are many photos of the gardens and places we visited. I’m just really bad at curating the historical record of my life. Read on …
Her Despair and Personal Power
I learned several days ago of the death of Joanna Macy, activist, passionate heart, brilliant thinker, and a woman who gave me the courage and permission to redefine my life. She died at the age of 96 having written twelve books, inspiring who-knows-how-many hearts, as she did mine. Her work prods us forward and guides us still. Read on …
More than just the sun came up today On the election of Zohran Mandani
This will be brief and entirely off-label, but I’ve been steeped in American politics these last five months and today, that’s a good thing. I don’t think my being consumed by the south-of-the-border-calamity will be a surprise to anyone, most of the world already flattened-against-the-wall-spiralling around the insanity that has taken over the White House. Read on …
I am humbled by the response to my request for insight into what my next project, my legacy project, would be. Thank you to those of you who responded within Substack or engaged by email. Thank you to those who pledged subscriptions and those who suggested different ideas. Thank you to those who urged caution, knowing the burden such an undertaking might become. Thank you to those whose enthusiasm was inspiring. Read on …
It has been AGES since I have written. I apologize for that but hope that this brief post will help you understand why that has been and will encourage your input into a couple of projects I hope to pursue over the next while. If most of you are fired up about one but uninterested in the other, I’ll have some real clarity about which to pursue. If you’re evenly split between both of them, you’ll have to argue your point in the comments. There is only so much time. Read on …
I cried when I broke my favourite mug
The days of visiting Florida’s Sanibel Island, first with my son and husband, and then, when the former became disinterested, just with Scott, are over. We haven’t been there since COVID, of course. We didn’t make a decision not to go, we just realized, when we finally could have, that things were not what they had been “before”. The climate remained a huge issue for me and I didn’t want to fly. Read on …
If you aren’t completely freaked out by what is happening in the world right now, I hope you’re at least concerned. And if you aren’t concerned, I’m wondering why you’re reading this because you can’t possibly be interested in anything I might write. So, I’m going to assume that, if you’re reading this, you are concerned, even if you may not be completely freaked out (yet). Read on …
With the changes that have taken place in America in the last seven days, it feels like the whole world has been recreated. It hasn’t. It’s deeply and seriously threatened by the President of the UnitedStates. But you don’t need to let that happen. You can resist. We all can no matter where we live for whom we voted. Read on …
I’m certain that scientists have done studies on the significance of trauma experienced by those who witness it secondhand – watching it on television or hearing another describe it. Maybe they’ve found that trauma only occurs if a television viewer is very young, and (presuming they are spared the news channel) doesn’t know that what they are watching is a made-up story and the people simply actors pretending to be frightened. Or, forget studying the young, maybe they’ve found that watching a Harlan Coben series is enough to frighten anyone out of their wits but not enough to cause trauma. Read on ...
Yesterday, the news broke that Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, was kicking truth to the curb. His argument is that free speech has been reigned in for too long and that the community needs to be able to say what they will. He posted a video outlining his free speech plan to LinkedIn today. Those who use the platform will be able to monitor whatever lies others are telling and make sure that truth wins out in the end. Right. Read on …
As the dawn breaks just above the 43rd northern parallel, its bluish light filters into my room, glistening off the blanket of snow which settled upon our wee planetary spot over the past day. With any luck, it will be a white Christmas and merry will be the order of the day. Wouldn’t that be lovely. Read on …
Many years ago, as West Hill was transitioning to a non-exclusive community, I created a Longest Night service which is held each year on December 21st. Although I am no longer in ministry with West Hill, the service continues, a marker of the time of year, and exploration of both the essence of darkness and our need to remind ourselves of the light that resides within us and which is ours to shine into the world. Read on …
We are what we allow ourselves to become
We love lists. I cannot imagine the number of pads of paper conjured and sold that have the invitation to make a list on them. “To do” “Books I’ve read” “Wedding Registry” “Movies” “Groceries” “Birthdays” “Books to Read” “Dear Santa” “2025” (I meant that as a yearly planner list; as I typed it, however, the ominous tone of those numbers in that sequence chilled me. Damn.) Read on …
Call it heresy if you must, but you need to know: it wasn’t me who started it all. Read on …
Shaken awake from my admiration of Kamala’s strength and passion and grit, I’ve spent the day eating the leftover Hallowe’en candy. And we had a lot of candy left over. Scott’s allergic to chocolate, so it is all mine save the twizzlers. I’m not quite finished, but I’m close. Read on …
These past few days, many of us have marked at least one of two converging traditions: Yom Kippur in Jewish households and communities around the world and Thanksgiving in Canada. The former is a day of atonement, when the world is set aright through the acknowledgement of wrongs. The latter, a gathering of families and friends to celebrate the harvest, something to which few of us remain directly connected. Read on …
As I write, if I turn and look out my window, I see a gorgeous autumn day, the sky a crystal blue with classic fluffy clouds, leaves late-turning, and the hydrangeas across the street still in their autumnal lime-green bloom. Read on …
…. The truth is this; I wrote the sequel to the Primal Shadow not long after posting that deeply introspective piece. I had every intention of getting it online. But I let the momentum drift and then completely lost heart. I’ve always believed it has been important to bring my own life experiences to the work of engaging others as they explore their own. But that next piece felt like it might be too much for any of us. We will see. Read on …
It as dinnertime and the five of us – mom (pregnant with my brother) and dad, and my older and younger sisters – were seated at the kitchen table. I don’t think this was the table with the missing leg, the one that had to be propped up on the hot water radiator; I seem to recall my dad sitting at the end of the table and, of course, he couldn’t have been if the table was propped on the rad. But memories are fickle things. Read on …
It as dinnertime and the five of us – mom (pregnant with my brother) and dad, and my older and younger sisters – were seated at the kitchen table. I don’t think this was the table with the missing leg, the one that had to be propped up on the hot water radiator; I seem to recall my dad sitting at the end of the table and, of course, he couldn’t have been if the table was propped on the rad. But memories are fickle things. Read on …
When I was young, had anyone suggested that I spend most of my life being “a minister”, I’d have smirked, thought about it, and then laughed right out loud. But life shifts and changes you and after what I recently came to understand as a “post-traumatic growth” period, I found myself choosing to study theology and embedding myself in the work of engaging community in conversations about wonder, beauty, truth, goodness, and love and what we are privileged to do with all that. Read on …
With this dark and painful stuff
I’ve been attending a six-session program focused on helping participants attend to and manage the trauma of climate anxiety and sorrow. It is facilitated by Toronto psychiatrist, Nate Charach (video), who brings far more than his medical credentials to the work of creating space for our small group to move through the processing of grief. And its has sparked insights into the deep corridors of my history that have nothing to do with climate but possibly everything to do with “how I turned out.” Read on …
Last Thursday, April 11th, shareholders of the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) met in Etobicoke at the Toronto Congress Centre (TCC). … I’ve attended conferences with some awesome speakers, met people I’d only previously known online, stood behind one of its podiums while sharing my own thoughts with others, and managed to get into some very interesting conversations with others who agreed with my thinking or were anxious to tell me how much they disdained my perspective. Some, I’ll admit, just ignored me which always, somehow, felt just plain rude. Read on …
I’ve just rummaged through the faded construction paper and report cards left over from the last time I thinned out the box of my primary school papers saved so long ago by my mom. It was only last year I tossed at least half of what had been sent home with me when mom and dad downsized two decades ago. Whatever the mental algorithm I used that afternoon, it was clearly different than the one I’d have used this morning. As a result, the first picture of me in the newspaper that I was looking for is obviously lost to me now. You’d have been amused, I’m sure. Read on …
Inspiration from a funeral reading
One of the responsibilities of being clergy is, of course, presiding over funerals for those in your congregation or their family members. As the number of families without religious connections grew, so, too, did demands on clergy to engage with them at those points considered rites of passage – birth and baptism, marriage, and death. For many years, I made myself available to the bereaved both within and beyond my congregations, creating space into which a family and friends might pour their grief, anger, or brokenness and holding that space long enough that the work of moving through it might begin. But early on, I learned that sometimes, not only sorrow filled that space. Read on …
I don’t know when perfection became such a task driver. I’m sure it was long before Facetune’s “Just swipe for perfect skin,” (please only use that link to gawk; you don’t need to fine-tune your, or anyone else’s, face) and Adobe Lightroom (which, after years, I still haven’t figured out … Read on …
Despite a grammatical conundrum, I’m sharing a poem that emerged early this morning. The conundrum pertains to the first line, “If today were yesterday,” which was born, “If today was yesterday” and has since been modified. To my grammatically-brilliant partner, “was” just didn’t sound right. So he investigated online and returned with the sage wisdom that “were” is to “was” what “hypothetical” is to “real”. Of course! As in the sentence: “If wishes were horses!” Read on …
Determined to make something of it, at my insistence, the back of one of West Hill’s oak pews spent several years in my garage. It had been removed from the sanctuary along with all its siblings in order to create a more flexible space. This one piece – a short one from the choir loft, maybe? – had come home with me, the rest donated elsewhere – red oak no longer in vogue – most of them to the local high school shop class. Read on …
A while back, I came into ownership of several of Winston Churchill’s books written about the history of World War II. I’ve been reading my way through The Gathering Storm, the first in the series. The book deals with the years leading up to the full outbreak of the Second World War. Despite it being the book I open in the hope it will lull me to sleep at night, I rarely put it down with my eyes drooping. The subject is fascinating. Churchill is fascinating. Read on …
It has been so hard to watch the events unfolding in Gaza and not fall into the ease of a hardline approach on one side or the other of any one particular event before having all the information, watching our world leaders as they do so. We are witnessing entrenched distrust, fear, and hatred ripping two countries further apart from one another, the destruction and violence growing day by day. The images are harrowing. The agony, palpable. The sorrow, immeasurable. Read on …
When there’s nothing left to lose
This morning, I began a letter to Heather Cox Richardson, one of the most clear-thinking analysts of contemporary American politics. She writes “Letters from an American” pretty much every day, animating her country’s contemporary politics by connecting them to its history, either of the present or past emerging in the better or worse light on any particular day. I appreciate her insights so much that “Letters from an American” takes precedence over my overly-hyphenated freshly-ground fair-trade dark-roast decaf morning coffee, consumed before I get out of bed. The “Letters,” that is. The coffee comes later. Read on …
Sometimes, we come across a piece of writing that slays us, shoves reality right through us like a sword, perspective mixed with an energy that’s been unleashed by sudden awareness. Read on …
Exactly a year ago this month, I began figuring out the details of my returning to the work I loved with the people at West Hill United, work I had needed to leave because of issues related to a medication I’d been taking too long. At the beginning of this past February, I was back, ramping up to full-time hours while leading services, preparing Perspective(s), writing Focused Moments, and exploring the trails the congregation had laid since my sudden departure twenty-eight months before. Read on …
There is a moment that lives in between totally f*&ked and some form of redemption. In that moment – if it ever arrives – something happens that opens up the thing called possibility. With possibility, anything can look different even as it stands, right there in front of us, looking exactly the same as it did a moment before. When we were children, it was the Fairy Godmother’s perfectly timed arrival or the world’s most famous “heroes in a half-shell” showing up with their super ninja weapons. Read on …
The rain has turned the magic of our backyard to a wet, brown mess though the cardinals keep arriving at the feeder, and a Hairy (is that “an Hairy?”) Woodpecker has joined her cousins, the Downies, and taken up residence nearby. She doesn’t add to the colour palette, I must say. She does add to the sound palette, though, and somewhat enthusiastically. It’s one of those days when I need to stop, even if I’m doing nothing, and pay attention to how I really am. It’s been a week. Read on …
There are some things it’s good to be angry about. Not always good to spew that anger all over the place, though, indiscriminately staining anyone and everyone with its blood; but it’s good to hold it, know it, and feel its power within you. And when the time and place and person are right, it is a good thing to be able to share your anger, sufficient to the point of understanding, with a clarity that will either freeze, burn, or turn the heart of the recipient. Read on …
For many years before my leave of absence, I would select six movies each January that I believed would be nominated for the Academy Awards and schedule them for consideration in my Perspective(s)1 over the weeks leading up to Oscar night. We’ve explored some amazing films over many years, reaching back into the past, once, for films I thought should have received the award. That’s when I talked about Reds. Read on …
I believe lots of things.
When I was young, as soon as I no longer wanted to be a ballerina (didn’t every little girl), I wanted to be a nuclear physicist when I grew up. It felt like a field that was full of possibility because everything wasn’t yet nailed down tight. I thought the exploration of nuclear power broke rules, flaunted traditional understandings, created possibilities out of the impossible. That was all sort of true, of course. Read on …
I am so happy to be back at work this week after twenty-eight months on medical leave! In October 2020, I walked out of the building and away from a congregation I’d spent 23 years with, knowing I wasn’t going to be able to return the next week and with almost no expectation that I would be able to return at all.*[1] This Sunday, February 12th, West Hill and I will celebrate our 26th anniversary of creating community together and it will feel so good to be back in the amazing energy created there. Read on …
Several months ago, I added a subscription to my inbox. It’s a company, Visual Capitalist, that collates information and then presents it in graphic form. Sounds boring, right? But the impact is fantastic. You can absorb so much more information in visual form than you can when you just read a bunch of country names and numbers. Every one that turned up in my inbox was impressive. Read on …
Earlier this week, I read that Spain has ruled cigarette manufacturers responsible for the cost of cigarette butt clean-up. I was SOOOOO excited about that; completely over the top! Nirit Datta, an activist in India, has been collecting hundreds of thousands of butts from roadsides and shores and mailing them back to the cigarette companies who sold them. He’s one of my heroes. Read on …
A year ago this evening, New Year’s Eve, I lay curled up in bed where I had been for several days and nights. I was filled with despair for Earth, its peoples, its future and anger at myself for not having done enough, said enough, rebelled enough to make a difference. I had little desire to keep trading air for breath and fell back to ruminating on the plans I’d tucked away so many times before, unused, safe, ready. My heart wouldn’t just stop on its own. Read on …
And today in the news: Anything you really want to hear
Yesterday morning, I skipped my news routine. Until then, upon awakening and when I’ve been able (decided by a number of things…), I switched on my phone and listened to the news. In Canada, since I was a kid, and for many years before that, the nation’s main source of news has been the Canadian … Read on …
“I don’t feel hopeful …”: quoting Clover Hogan, Force of Nature
The end of COP27 doesn’t feel like the end of the world, but I have moments when it feels close. Like many who follow the issues related to climate disaster, I had not expected much from the conference. In fact, I think I was fairly certain little would be achieved. Last minute resolutions may have lifted the atmosphere … Read on…
Tumblers, and the collection of everything: It’s a family thing …
I can remember a long-ago day when my mom opened the kitchen cupboard doors and started putting the glasses away. That’s not really an extraordinary thing, of course, and not something one would normally hold onto in the crevices of one’s mind. Putting the dishes away is pretty routine. But there were a lot … Read on …
It’s not all about me: Really. It’s not.
When I chose the name “A Whole Lot of Broken” to describe this place, this repository for both my random and considered thoughts, I was virtually encompassed and immobilized by the broken state of my health. But my intention wasn’t to focus on all that had crumbled; neither was it solely to relay the story of … Read on …
Having said all that: Perspective changes. We learn more. Things come together …
Life has continued to educate, and I have continued to learn. And so, too, has the journey continued on its circuitous route toward the emergence of new days, realities, understandings, and challenges. Still, it is a journey filled with moments of exquisite beauty, deep joy, silence, and music, light, and wonder, and … Read on …
A creep back into the world I love: Finding peace, piece by piece
It has been a challenging couple of years for all of us. COVID has driven us insane, personally, communally, and politically. I am fortunate to be able to be bubbled safely, to have all the resources at hand that I might need to keep myself occupied, shelves of great books, and a library app that delivers audio versions of … Read on …
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