Here is a meditation I’ve used over the years to help myself and others let go of a particular difficulty, to stop focusing on the problem, and feel ones true healthy essence. I hope it may be useful. Rest, Sugar, & Light – John Calvi I am lying comfortably and relaxed.Every muscle is resting and […]
Friday 9/10 – Preparations Towards the West In a few days, I will leave Putney, VT to drive across country to host the 4th Quaker Initiative to End Torture- QUIT at Quaker Center in Ben Lomond, CA September 24-26. I would very much appreciate it if you could during this time hold this effort in […]
Dear All, Thank you for all your notes and for holding the QUIT conference in the Light. The conference was excellent! All 4 presenters outdid themselves in presenting current information from their fields. Terry Kupers, author of Prison Madness, gave us clear information about how the use of torture in American prisons results in deformed […]
I’ve a box full of maps. Going through the box to find maps I might use, I find odd sorts of things. Here are 5 postcards bought in Spain and one written out to me but unsent- Marshall had some work in Salamanca Spain. And there’s a map of the solar system- now that’s a […]
All day I’ve felt a bit sad. I’ve been remembering the arc of AIDS in my life, what I usually think of as the AIDS WARS. I remember hearing a little something in August of 83, an article in Time magazine perhaps, about gay men getting cancer in San Francisco and New York. I was […]
It happened again recently and while it is not frequent, it is also not unusual. I’m at a yearly meeting and a woman comes up to me. She says that in the past few days she realizes that when ever she is standing near me that her neuropathy stops hurting. She laughs and says that […]
The Vermont State House Montpelier Vermont Public Hearings on Gay Marriage Bill The drive north form Putney is sprinkled with spring rain. The sky is shades of blue grey as the interstate moves between the Connecticut River in the East and a ridgeline of low mountains in the west. The temperature drops from 50’s to […]
When did this become the old familiar way to be? I am taking the steps to lay my hands on someone and the work has already begun- my posture changes to very upright, my pace goes down to very slow so as not to scare a skittish horse, my hands land on the surface of […]
I haven’t put this story to paper before. I understand it differently now, maybe in ways I couldn’t have decades ago. It was early morning when the phone rang. A woman I’d taught with in prisons was calling. She’d just come back from the hospital with a young friend who’d been raped earlier that morning. […]
Some travel these last few weeks, out of the New England winter. As this sabbatical closes, I find more and more moments of pondering this past year and seeing so much more of myself. It’s clear that I am a nicer person when I am working- something about the disciplines of work, setting the self […]