for Sister Roseann and the Monastic Congregation of St. Scholastica
On the left wrist of the nun
with the silver hair and soft eyes
was a bracelet made by a child.
Small white cubes with black all caps
proclaimed, “NEVER GROW UP.”
With an impish shrug of her shoulders
she explained she might have written
“NEVER GIVE UP.” And I thought
how for fifteen hundred years
her order has flourished through
the rise and fall of the Mongol Empire,
The British Empire, the Aztecs,
Bart Simpson, Mickey Mouse.
Has grown through the introduction of zero
as a standalone number and paper money,
gunpowder and windmills and the compass.
Has seen the creation of moveable type
and the steam engine, has witnessed
the telegraph and email and bots that answer the phone.
And I felt it inside her, still growing,
the devotion of centuries, the kind of faith
that lives on past plastic bracelets,
cherry Twizzlers and Instagram, a community
grown in the deep, rich soil of humility,
simplicity, hospitality, moderation and prayer.
I felt it in her open smile, in the
kind way she held my hand in hers,
in the way she reframed her work
as faithfulness, I felt her trust
that some things continue to prosper
against all odds, this, the gift of never
growing up, of never giving up,
of ever growing beyond understanding.
Posts Tagged ‘humility’
Hanging Out with the Benedictines
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Benedictines, community, history, humility, longevity, religion on June 26, 2026| 6 Comments »
One Becoming
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged authenticity, humility on June 19, 2026| 1 Comment »
moment so honest
I put down the pen
and let myself be written.
In Its Own Time
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged bats, forgiveness, humility, surprise on May 12, 2026| 7 Comments »
Long before dark
a single bat zig zags
and dips, its erratic
twisting and diving
so unlike the smooth
loops of swallows—
it’s like when forgiveness
grows wings before the mind
is on board, moving inside us
with its own mysterious
intelligence. More agile than we thought,
surprisingly flexible, wild, clearly blind.
How strange to see it fluttering
in the light, something we’ve been told
is improbable.
We couldn’t say it’s beautiful,
yet we can’t stop staring.
How humble it is. How hungry.
How to Make Popovers
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged baking, humility, instructions, popovers, pride on May 5, 2026| 3 Comments »
Just because it is simple doesn’t mean you
can depend on good results. There are tricks
to make sure they pop. Preheat the buttered
pan at 450 degrees. Bring the eggs to room
temperature. Whirl them with salt till the whole
mixture froths. Warm the milk, but not too hot.
Melt the butter. Be stingy with flour. Mix only
as long as it takes to sing the first verse of Blackbird.
But do not invite guests to show off your prowess,
to boast how light, how airy, how balloon-ish-ly
your popovers rise. Pride will slip in and spoil
the batch. Pride, an ingredient so strong even
what’s foolproof goes flat. And even if the popovers rise,
that pride, oh my friend, you’ll taste it. You’ll taste it.
Such Gratefulness
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged daughter, humility, love on November 26, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I messed up. Big.
It was, you can imagine,
embarrassing.
My daughter put her head
on my shoulder,
her body warm, her
touch soft.
It’s okay, mom, she said,
her voice gentle and small.
Everyone messes up.
She slipped her hand
into mine. For a long time
we sat that way.
What was big became
small. What was small
became great.
In one humble moment,
the vast arc of love.
I felt myself dissolve
into that arc.
1990
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, humility, memory, summer on June 10, 2025| 4 Comments »
That was the summer I picked up a sex worker
on East Colfax, confusing her upturned thumb
for hitchhiking. Imagine her surprise
when she got into my mom’s silver Volvo and saw me,
a girl of twenty in a pink dress I wore
for my theater internship that day.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Oh, you know,” she said, “just down the road.”
This is how I remember it. I warned her
how dangerous that part of town could be
before she told me how her pimp would beat her.
I think we both shocked each other.
She couldn’t imagine why I had picked her up.
To this day, I am grateful she never let me go.
Hypertrophy
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged grief, humility, weightlifting on September 24, 2024| 12 Comments »
Perhaps it is like lifting weights,
the way we learn to carry grief.
At first we cannot lift it at all,
crushed as we are beneath it.
But then, because to live
we must move, we move
just the smallest measure.
With our lungs, it so happens.
And breath by breath, we lift grief
the tiniest increment.
That’s how it begins.
Oh the muscle of stubbornness.
How life longs to live through us,
even when we would rather give up.
How strange that the only way
to rebuild our strength
is first by breaking down.
The ache is great. Everything tires.
But eventually, the body repairs
what is damaged, relearns
how to carry what at first seemed impossible,
until we are familiar with the weight,
conversing with the weight, even smiling,
even laughing, even playing with the weight.
It’s like the way a mother’s arms
strengthen the longer she carries
her child. It’s like the way I once
could barely lift the barbell,
and then it was not that the weight
became lighter, but that I developed
until I could work with it better.
Does the weight ever lessen?
I don’t know. But I do know it’s easier now
to carry it. And sometimes
I need to change the way I hold it
in order to go on moving.
And sometimes I am simply
so humbled by grief I must
put the weight down and all I can do
is breathe.
And so I do. So I do.
A Little Self-Talk
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ants, humility, pride, sins on March 7, 2024| 10 Comments »
Pride crawls beneath the heart’s door
like an ant. You thought, perhaps,
you’d shut it out. Thought you could live
in a small hut called humility.
But pride is a master at entering
when something sweet is at stake.
Look. There it is in your honey.
Did you think you did such a good job
sweeping pride out? Oh, you did.
Thought you could be good at being humble.
Better at it than most.
Oh sweetheart, it’s not a matter
of shutting pride out. It will always come back.
It’s what you do next that matters.
One Way She’s Shaped Me
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged connection, foot, friendship, humility, Kayleen Asbo, touch on March 1, 2024| 6 Comments »
for Kayleen Asbo
With hands that have played Bach
on the finest pianos in Europe,
hands that have written poems
and love letters and treatises on art,
with precious, skilled, talented hands
she lifted my foot to her lap
and smoothed oil into the cold, rough skin,
kneading and pressing deep circles
into my arches, squeezing my toes
(once deemed by a boyfriend
“the ugliest toes I’ve ever seen”).
And she made me feel beautiful.
I remember how all of me softened,
even those voices that sometimes rage,
you’re not good enough.
How could those voices stand a chance
against such a gift of touch?
Her hands said, you are not alone.
Her hands said, you belong.
Her hands said, you are treasure to me.
And the day was gray; her hands were strong.
I was less woman, more clay.
With hands that coax music
from sorrow and fear,
she made me into song.
*
Exploring Dante with Guides for your Head and Your Heart
March 7, April 4, May 2 10 a.m. – 2:30 p.m. Mountain Time
Zoom (recordings available)
Oh friends, if you weren’t able to join us today for an ecstatic hour of exploring Dante’s Divine Comedy, don’t worry–here’s the replay. It’s free–a preview of a three-part class that begins next Thursday and runs the first Thursday of the month for three months. The classes themselves with be spacious–with lots of time to listen to composer, pianist and cultural historian Kayleen Asbo lead us through the art, music, history and mythology that informs Dante’s life and writing. Then I will help you explore the truth of your heart and how this centuries-old story might have something valuable for you in times of loss, struggle, elation. It’s a story of connection, of how we help each other, how we become most wholly ourselves. Join the big conversation as we Find Our Way Out of Hell to the Shores of Acceptance (Inferno, March 7); Climb the Mountain of Hope (Purgatory, April 4) and Come Home to Ourselves in Paradise (Paradiso, May 2). Each session has a 30-minute break in the middle. Recordings available to all registrants. Sliding scale. Scholarships available. To register, click here. You do not need to have read Divine Comedy–in fact, we suggest you read it AFTER the class so you have more tools for understanding and appreciating it.
One Instruction
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged garden, humility, nasturtium, teaching on July 22, 2023| 4 Comments »
not here to teach me
but to bring beauty
this red nasturtium
Ambition
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ambition, goals, humility, simplicity, surrender on January 10, 2023| 16 Comments »
I am so far from the woman
I want to be, so far
from humility and simplicity.
I dream of clearing
not only the shelves,
not only the closets,
but also the cluttered inner rooms
that crowd out the divine.
Every day I search for ways
to best meet the day—
with poems, beautiful meals,
with songs, with praise—
so many ways to be radiant,
but I suspect all the day wants
is for me to meet it
and all that comes into my path
with kindness, with spaciousness.
In my effort to be good, to be whole,
I make it so difficult, this life.
The day doesn’t seem to hold
my exuberance against me.
It shows up as always,
generous as a new tomorrow,
quiet as dawn.
Elegy for Laurie
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged elegy, humility, inspiration, Laurie James on September 19, 2022| 8 Comments »
“Who am I to inspire someone else and prod a good poem out of them? I don’t see myself in that light.” —Laurie James, poet, friend, performer, organizer, member of the tribe, in an interview with Eduardo Brummel, Write More Now, 2017
A cantankerous sparrow of a woman,
I imagine her rolling her eyes at death
as she lights up a cigarette and says,
“Let’s get on with it.”
A relentlessly generous bear of a woman,
already I hear rumors she’s visiting people
from the other side, asking them to dance.
She was the one who would build the nest
big enough for us all to fit.
She was the one who’d carve us a space—
carve it out of nothing, if that’s what she had—
so we could gather and rock each other’s worlds.
She was the one who knew the weight of moonlight,
the one who went from mute to muse.
She was the one with the mischievous smile,
the nomad with poems for a road.
She was the one who inspired us
to be family as we write.
She was perhaps the only one
who didn’t see herself in that light.
Seeing Clearly
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged eyes, forgiveness, gaze, humility, love on July 18, 2021| 4 Comments »
Forgive me for wanting to fix you.
As if we could be anything
but who we are.
Forgive me for every time
I have looked at you with hawkish eyes,
eyes with talons, eyes that hunt.
Forgive me for thinking I know
what you need, for thinking I am right.
For scrutinizing, for judging,
for using my gaze to build walls.
I want to look at you with eyes
as soft as the light in the field after dawn.
Want to meet you with eyes
as benevolent as rain. Want to see you
with eyes as open as sky, open as innocence.
Want to see myself this way, too—
then, it is easier to soften, to lean in, to bloom.
This is how I want to look at you—
not with eyes that fix, but eyes
that dismantle defensiveness,
eyes that say let us meet in our flawedness,
eyes unstintingly generous,
a gaze that says you are safe with me,
a gaze born of humility, a gaze made of wings.
How the Mystery Arrives Today
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged god, humility, mystery, paradox, poem, poetry, spirituality on November 10, 2013| 1 Comment »
Power to the paradox.
–Jack Mueller
Today you are the cut on the finger
and you also the knife.
You the bandage that wraps the wound.
You the Advil, the ice.
You the sun, and the burn that comes.
You the aloe salve.
You the moon and the absence of moon.
You the children’s laugh.
And you the scent of old dead leaves,
and you the stubborn green.
You the red wine and the empty cup.
The song, the one who sings.
And you the silence between the notes.
You the coat and the chill.
You the uncomfortable anger, the blame,
you the one who sees through.
And you the lines I will never write.
And you the eraser, the lead.
You the peace and you the unrest
the beginning without end.
All of It, Every Bit
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gratitude, humility, Issa, poem, suffering, tea on September 9, 2013| 2 Comments »
Tsuyu no yo wa tsuyu no yo nagara sari nagara
The world of dew —
A world of dew it is indeed,
And yet, and yet . . .
—Issa
Thank you for this world of dew,
for dew enough to fill a cup,
to fill my small cup to brimming,
though some mornings all the dew’s been spilled.
It matters not the hand that spilled it,
though there is a tug toward blame.
In the story, the Hindu master pours the cup
too full, and when the tea begins to spill
the scientists appeal to him in shock.
You are too full, he says to them.
Come back to me when you are empty.
Then we’ll talk.
World, thank you for emptying me.
And thank you for my cup, for this
fragile cup with it’s long thin cracks.
Thank you for my thirst,
this thirst so deep sometimes
I beg for one more sip.
And thank you for these lips
that beg, thank you for the empty cup,
and thank you for the sometimes dew.
love haiku
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged haiku, humility, love, poem on August 22, 2013| 3 Comments »
you the ocean
I keep trying to measure
with my tea cup
Waiting the Diagnosis
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged acceptance, body, bow, humanness, humility, poem, practice, suffering on June 26, 2012| 3 Comments »
I bow to the ache of it,
the deep inner eating
away at itself, I bow
to the shivers, the gooseflesh,
the waves of nausea and pain.
I bow to the unnamed,
to question, to dark.
And I bow to the fear
that swells in small spaces
and the vast quiet
that dissipates the fear.
I bow to every other human
who hurts and I bow
to the yellow flowers tonight
blooming in the muck
where the river used to be.
I bow to the ache, goddammit,
I bow to it and I bow
to the reluctance to bow to it,
bow to the longing to shove
it all away, and I bow,
hush now, just bow.