Home of the Wanderer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTaN2X_25Mg

You remember how I posted a few weeks back about “how my heart moves“? Well… if that was the deep unseen motion of an aquifer, this past week I’ve felt the sudden rushing of spring mountain streams. It’s all very interesting, and delightful, to experience. So I wrote a few poems, and a few more, and a few more, and now have recorded an extended piece, “Springwater,” that’s composed of six haiku I wrote this afternoon. You can go watch it, of course, on YouTube. Enjoy! (more…)

There’s something moving in my heart that feels familiar, moving in a way like it sometimes has in well-established long-term relationships. It’s not the sparkling brilliance of novelty, nor the inner fire of mutual admiration – though I’m getting those too, to some extent – but a deep, calm, heart-joy, the building of which has usually taken a year or more of living together. It is a feeling that I associate with connection and safety.

Valuing connection, I am in a state of wonder. I wonder how this can be, because I’m not in any relationship where I’m ready to start introducing someone around as anything other than a friend, let alone move in together – or even stop dating others. I’m not in a place where I’d bring this or that person over to meet my parents, even if we were all in the same town. (more…)

From a recent email to a dear friend: (more…)

After a weekend-long training with the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP), a late-night meeting of the initial co-creators of MasterPeace Theater, and an early morning, and in anticipation of three weeks of full-paced work and travel, I decided that tonight I would take some time off.

Fortunately, I’d already heard from most of the folks who would have come to the committee meeting that, for one reason or another, they were already busy. I called the rest of them to check in, and share my hope that I would see them next week.

So now I have time to catch up on my work! (more…)

I started studying Taekwon-Do in 1990, T’ai-Chi in 1996, Aikido in 2000. I took Judo for about two years, from ages 8 to 10. I got started in Taekwon-Do partly because I had a friend who was getting his blackbelt, and I thought that seemed like a neat idea - that, and my older brother was doing it. (more…)

Walking helps me integrate my thoughts and emotions in my body, and sitting with nature helps me ground myself. Is it also simple to gather with friends and sing? I like to do that. I wonder – what is simplicity? What is pleasure? (more…)

Some things are just plain fun, and even easy, while providing a challenge.

For example, it’s challenging to sing really well, but when it works it just works. The voice flows out of the mouth effortlessly – at this point the voice is beyond belonging to a particular person, or at least it seems that way when I’m the one opening my mouth and letting song flow out. There’s no work involved, except in staying out of the way.

Similarly, I find a pleasant challenge when I can stare into my heart and discover the sun, everywhere I go. (more…)

If my life is successful in all the ways I hope, “Democracy and Diplomacy in the 21st Century” is a documentary, featuring interviews with world leaders, my close friends, and members of my family, including my brothers, my wife, my children, nieces, nephews, and several grandchildren. (Most of those are as-yet unidentified and/or unconceived.) Its makers will have sifted through old love-letters, course notes, and journals to reconstruct my early life, (more…)

I believe that government derives its legitimacy from the consent of the governed; that the best policies are those that most help the least well-off; and that by thinking together, members of a community can gather their collective wisdom to discover good ways to manage their common assets. I believe (more…)

We talk about breaking up, and for a long time it has seemed to me that most relationships end rather with a breakdown. Last year, I began to see that such separations could be breakthrough moments – in the sense with which we might speak of shattering the ice atop a frozen lake, and climbing out; or of attaining a new level of energy in life – and that those sorts of breakthroughs can properly be identified as break-ups. Recently, for the first time ever, I was in the position of having recognized a breakdown and insisted on a break-up, and this experience has brought a wealth of new perspective. I don’t recommend that anyone end a relationship solely for the sake of the insight, but rather, learn with me. (more…)