Spiritual practice for the coming year

January 1, 2026 in drawing outside every day | Tags: , | Leave a comment

Several years ago, inspired by my friend Janet and her daily butterfly practice, I drew a leaf of a California tree every day for the entire year, mostly from photos. I really enjoyed it and stuck with it, which is rare for me for a daily practice. So I am doing something similar this year, combining two spiritual practices: I will go outside and draw something I see there.

I’m not going to be a purist about it; if it’s pouring rain, I’ll draw indoors (ideally, drawing something outside from indoors). I thought I might have to do that today, but the rain let up and I went out to our back garden and drew a fern there. I’ll post my drawings now and then with the tag, “Drawing outside every day.”

Weeds, mostly dandelions, in the cracks between concrete paving slabs on a terrace in Tuntorp, Brastad, Lysekil Municipality, Sweden. Photo by W.carter, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Getting outdoors and making art are also both good for my mental health, even if I only do them for a few minutes. I’m prone to anxiety, and various studies show that spending time outdoors and drawing both reduce anxiety–certainly for people like me, who enjoy them. I don’t need to go to a big natural expanse, though I am very much looking forward to pulling over now and then on my commute through Marin and Sonoma Counties and drawing some of the more scenic stretches. Even spending attentive time with a weed growing through a crack in the sidewalk is an experience of awe and beauty.

What I read in 2025

December 31, 2025 in books | Tags: , | 1 comment

Interior Bernal Heights Library, L Maule. CC 4, Wikimedia Commons

Well, more or less. I lost the notebook I used from January through mid-July, which is so frustrating, because I put everything in my notebooks: sermon notes, journal entries, weekly schedules and to-do lists, lists of books I want to read and have read. However, the sermons can be recreated from audio (thank you, Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, for recording and posting your services), old to-do lists are unimportant, and as for journal entries, when do I ever reread them? I did manage to recreate a lot of my books-read list by looking up what I borrowed from the library, though, so here they are: most of the books I read in 2025. NF = nonfiction.

Old Babes in the Wood, Margaret Atwood

System Collapse (Murderbot Diaries), Martha Wells

Everyone This Christmas Has a Secret, Benjamin Stevenson

Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik

Uprooted, Naomi Novik

See No Stranger: A Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, Valarie Kaur (NF)

A Sinister Revenge, Deanna Raybourn

The Author’s Guide to Murder, Beatriz Williams

Noor, Nnedi Okorafor

Transcendent Kingdom, Yaa Gyasi

The Serviceberry, Robin Wall Kimmerer (NF)

The Kaigu Preservation Society, John Scalzi

One Way Witch, Nnedi Okorafor

On Looking, Alexandra Horowitz (NF)

Fire from Heaven, Mary Renault

All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (reread)

Long Island Compromise, Taffy Brodesser-Akner

Marble Hall Murders, Anthony Horowitz

Everything is Tuberculosis, John Green (NF)

What It Is, Lynda Barry (NF)

James, Percival Everett

The Berlin Stories, Christopher Isherwood

Kills Well with Others, Deanna Raybourn

My Murder, Katie Williams

Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison (reread)

Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father, Alysia Abbott (NF)

All Over Creation, Ruth Ozeki

Everyone Is Lying to You, Jo Piazza

The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey

If You Leave Me, Crystal Hana Kim

Asta’s Book, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)

Grasshopper, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell)

A Dark-Adapted Eye, Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell; reread)

The Face of Trespass, Ruth Rendell

Martin Chuzzlewit, Charles Dickens

The Time of Five Pumpkins, Alexander McCall Smith

The Rose Field, Philip Pullman

The Bonesetter’s Daughter, Amy Tan

The Impossible Fortune, Richard Osman

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

Purple Hibiscus, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

How High We Go in the Dark, Sequoia Nagamatsu

Ten Minutes and 38 Seconds in This Strange World, Elif Shafak

Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado

Sing, Unburied, Sing, Jesmyn Ward

Love Marriage, Monica Ali

And Then There Were None, Martha Noyes (NF).

Forty-eight books, three of which were rereads. I won’t try to rate them or summarize them or even start my favorites, but I’m happy to say more about any of them if someone asks.

What’s a book you read this year that stuck with you?

Too much too soon

November 4, 2025 in religion, religious education | Tags: | Leave a comment

The latest Ask Isabel column answers a parent whose child has learned about a heavy topic–from a church Sunday school.

Ask Isabel: Advice for the Spiritually Perplexed and Vexed

By the way,  if you enjoy Ask Isabel, two things you can do to support it is subscribe (it’s free) and share the column on social media, or with any friend who might take an interest.

El Diá de las Muertos llega

October 29, 2025 in fiestas & holy days, Oaxaca | Leave a comment

A lot of the decorations around doorways and such use fake cempazuchiles, but the real ones are also brought in by the truckload.
The corners of the Zócalo, the main square, have these entrances set up.
On the Alcalá, the pedestrian street running south to the Zócalo, there have been lots of dances, songs, theater performances, and parades–more than usual, or I guess all I can be sure of is more than six years ago. I think the intensity has increased because of the fiesta.
I hope the person who did this performer’s makeup knew a lot of the applause was for them. Just gorgeous.

Nopal

October 26, 2025 in art, drawings, uncategorized | Tags: | Leave a comment

Why I carry my sketchbook and notebook with me. When our feet get tired and it’s time to sit and rest, I can write or draw, which makes the extra several ounces in my backpack very worthwhile. Yesterday, when the heat and elevation forced a rest, this nopal cactus across the street from the Santo Domingo church caught my eye.

Pencil, 5×8 sketchbook page

I think I’ve probably adjusted to the elevation now. I used to dream of going to Macchu Pichu, but I don’t know if I could now. A jump from sea level to a mere 5,800 feet–Oaxaca’s elevation–takes me a couple of days. As with so many things, sufficient water and sleep help a lot.

In Oaxaca

October 24, 2025 in Mexico, Oaxaca | Tags: | Leave a comment

The street just outside the place we’re staying
I don’t want to eat gelatina for breakfast (or ever), but I feel a pleasant nostalgia seeing it set out at tiny little home-based establishments.
Pomegranate tree
“Movimiento,” a beautiful mural a few blocks away. Oaxaca’s indigenous people show up here and so many places.
Is this what happens if you let an impatiens grow into a tree? It might be. 
Día de los Muertos is coming soon and already celebrated, with cempazuchiles (marigolds) everywhere.
This made me laugh. The sign asks drivers please not to park in the pedestrian crosswalk, marked by steel bumps and orange paint. It’s having no effect.

I was headed to a café several blocks from our place, but gave up–I think Google Maps is out of date–and went to the local huge supermarket for oat milk and other necessities.

I love the way in their Mexico marketing, Kellogg’s just drops the euphemism and calls Frosted Flakes “Little Sugars.” Like Calvin’s “Sugar Bombs” in Calvin and Hobbes.
There’s great stuff at the supermercado, though, like an entire bakery with lots of fresh bread.  Naturally, I brought home one of these crocodiles.
Walking a different route home. We, too, can have sidewalks like this if we get rid of all those pesky regulations and the agencies that enforce them. It looked like a drop of 10-15 feet. Fun!
And when you come to the curb, a chasm opens between the sidewalk and the street. In case you missed the opportunity to plummet through the concrete before. US Americans, we could save so much tax money and our boring, “safe” sidewalks would soon disappear!

We had breakfast at the house and then headed to the centro. Altars and special decorations for the fiesta are everywhere.

What pictures can’t capture are the smells, like the heavenly scent of tortillas cooking all through the neighborhood. The feel of the round bumps of paving stones underfoot, and the necessity to duck now and then where a guy wire crosses the sidewalk. The sound of the very annoying truck driving all around with a recording of a woman speaking that was loud yet unintelligible. When the truck passed close by me as I explored, I realized she was listing all the tamales the truck driver sold. Yum. Maybe tomorrow I’ll flag it down, though I hate to reward such an obnoxious method of advertising. And then there were the sounds of dogs distantly barking, roosters crowing, people chatting with their neighbors. It all adds up to a place so familiar and beloved, I can’t believe we stayed away for six years.

Bring back the disappeared

September 26, 2025 in uncategorized | Leave a comment

Can you picture this?: A member of your family, or a dear friend, has been taken by ICE and locked in Alligator Auschwitz. Do you have someone specific in your mind? Okay.

You’re incredibly worried about them, of course. You get a lawyer, and you check the ICE database every day to see if there is any news of them.

Then, one day, they aren’t in the database. You check to see if you had a typo. No. They just aren’t there. You call your lawyer. The lawyer can’t get any more information than you can. This person you love has disappeared. Been Disappeared by the US government.

Mtenaespinoza, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The spray paint says “No one deserves to disappear,” and the heading in red before his name and other information says “Until we find you!!!”

You are desperate for someone to help you–to do something–to force the administration to tell you where they are.

Now what happens? Either thousands, millions, of your fellow-citizens demand answers, pressuring their representatives and senators to demand hearings and ask the administration tough questions, keep shining a light into this dark corner of the country until whatever is hidden there becomes visible–

–or they don’t. There is no help. You and your beloved family member are left to suffer alone.

We’re not going to let that happen. We’re calling our members of Congress, now (or using the contact forms on their websites). We’re doing it again tomorrow, and again the day after that. We’re putting it on our to-do lists, and we won’t stop, because the life of someone’s father, sister, husband, best friend, child, grandson is at stake. And we know if one day it is our beloved who disappears, we will need the solidarity of our sibling-citizens to save them.

Nexus: A group exhibit

August 31, 2025 in uncategorized | Leave a comment

The Arts Praxis course I took last semester at the United Theological School of the Twin Cities culminated in a group show called Nexus and a gallery talk by all of the artists, some of whom made visual art and others of whom did music or theater. I kept checking for the video for a while, then got distracted by the rest of life, and just discovered that it has been up for a while. My part begins at 1:25:00, though I certainly recommend watching the whole thing to take in some beautiful work by other students. Our professor and the presiding genius of the Arts Praxis–and of the Theology and the Arts concentration–was Dr. Jennifer Awes-Freeman.

Nexus: 2025 Arts Praxis Showcase

Dispatches from Ministry Days and General Assembly in Baltimore

June 20, 2025 in ministry | Tags: | Leave a comment

I looked up at the clock tower that rises above this district and discovered it said Bromo-Seltzer. Hence the name Bromo Arts District.

It also seems to be the Erstwhile Banks District. My hotel and several other nearby buildings are old banks, with the stately architecture of 19th century capitalism: no first-floor windows, Corinthian columns, high and sculpted ceilings, the bank’s name carved above the entrance like Ozymandias’. Oh, and the art is about money and wanted bank robbers.

In the convention center hotel–not the one I’m staying in–I saw this poster of a writer I love. Makes sense, as Poe is one of Baltimore’s most famous children, but it turned out it was marking the door to the Poe Room. Can you imagine: a meeting in the Poe Room?! I’d be afraid the door would be bricked up and we’d never escape.

The Calloway Room looks like much more fun.

As far as I can tell, there is no John Waters room. Regrettable.

I helped staff Harvard Divinity School’s booth for a couple of hours. About half of the people who swung by were interested in seminary, and half wanted to say “Stay strong, Harvard!” Amen. I think Harvard learned from Columbia’s experience what Columbia should have known: the only reward for giving a shakedown artist what he wants is to be shaken down more.

After dinner with West Chester, PA’s minister, Dan Schatz–he’s my bestie from seminary, and with our birthdays a week apart in June, whenever we’re both at GA we have a birthday dinner in between–we came outside to light rain and bright sun. The building we’d just exited blocked our sight of any rainbow, but we walked around it and there it was!

People congratulate me wherever I go, and it takes a few minutes of conversation to discover whether I’m being congratulated for 25 years in ministry (the ministers have a service celebrating 25- and 50-year anniversaries, so people know), my retirement from FT work, my completion of a long ministry in Palo Alto, or Indigo’s graduation and college plans. This is how lucky I am.

I sang in the choir for the Service of the Living Tradition (celebrating milestones for religious professionals), something I’ve done only once before. It was an utter joy, and also I now have an india.arie earworm.

I have taken almost no selfies despite running into a zillion dear friends and colleagues. I rush over and hug, but it doesn’t occur to me to snap a picture. Sorry, y’all. I hope you know I love you.

Clearing things out

June 12, 2025 in uncategorized, UUCPA | 1 comment

You cannot open more than one lateral file drawer at a time, of course. So I can’t take a picture of the three drawers of this four-drawer lateral file that are empty. But I’m sure you believe me.

In case I failed to post it here before, June 30 is my last day at UUCPA. I promised myself I’d have the lateral file, which was quite full, cleared out before leaving for our General Assembly (and the ministers’ conference that precedes it), which I do on Monday. The first three drawers took a couple of months, but I’m on a roll and confident that I’ll clear out the last one tomorrow. That will be awesome, even though the bummer of file cabinets is that the office looks the same whether they are full or empty. I don’t care. I will know they’re empty,  and that a dreaded task got easier and easier until I was done with it.

I have accumulated a lot of paper in 22 years. I should plant several trees in compensation. Between meetings today, I took boxload after boxload to the recycling dumpster, feeling lighter each time. And I did a few rounds of distributing Stuff from my office to its former and future homes, such as the office-supplies cabinet in the main office, the kitchen, and the art-supplies shelves. Lighter! Lighter! By the way, no one at UUCPA need ever buy file folders, hanging files, index cards, three-ring binders, or paper clips again. I’m not sure anyone, anywhere need ever buy paper clips again, since I have never bought any and yet I never run short at either home or work, but that’s a mystery I don’t need to solve.

We’ll have lots of both members and guests at the service on Sunday, so my goal is to have the files cleared out and the office looking tidy by the end of tomorrow, Friday.  (It was tidy before the last few whirlwind weeks of clearing stuff out. Things get so messy as they’re being reorganized.) I am dearly fond of my beautiful, orderly office–in the last several months, I’ve repeatedly thought of an old Onion headline, “Nine-month Fetus Finally Has Womb Just the Way He Likes It”–and I want it to look good, even if very few people pop in. A few will, for sure, because they are giving new homes to a bunch of my books, which are waiting for them in boxes and bags along one wall.

The desk is almost empty or, in the case of some supplies and files that our interim minister will need, neatly organized. The surface of the desk, though, not so much. So that’s tomorrow’s task, after drawer number four, and between some more key meetings.

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