There is a photograph I have carried in my memory for decades — not one taken on film, but one pressed into the body the way cold presses into bone. It is a winter morning in Detroit, still dark at six a.m., and I am standing at the kitchen window watching my mother mix paint […]
When the Map Runs Out: Finding Your Way Through the Desert In-Between On liminal seasons, sacred disorientation, and the slow work of becoming There is a moment — if you have ever been truly lost — when the map in your hand stops making sense. The road it promises isn’t there. The landmarks don’t match. […]
The Day After Tomorrow There is a photograph I keep in my mind from the early days of Varment Guard — not an actual photograph, just the image burned in from living it. It’s a door. A plain commercial door, nothing fancy about it, with a small wooden frame above it. And inside that frame, […]
Picture a waiting room. You’ve been there five minutes, and without meaning to, you’ve already written a story about everyone in it — the man with the expensive watch who checks his phone every thirty seconds, the woman with paint on her jeans who hasn’t looked up from her book, the teenager in the corner […]
Good Enough for This Life Do you ever think about whether you are good enough for this life? I ask it that way on purpose — not “good enough at your job” or “good enough for the relationship” but for this life, the whole thing, the fact of being a particular kind of person moving […]
Deep Peace: A Journey Home to Stillness There is a moment, if you have ever stood at the edge of the ocean just before dawn, when the world holds its breath. The darkness is not yet gone. The light has not yet fully arrived. And in that thin, trembling space between the two, something ancient […]
The Art of Beholding: Learning to See What Has Always Been There There is a particular quality of light that appears in the late afternoon of an Ohio April. It arrives low and amber, slanting through leaves that have already begun their eager growth to bright greens. If you are moving fast enough — hurrying […]
The Divine Touch of Connection: How a Single Image Holds a History, a Story, and a Call My father was an artist of some renown. He drew an image like this during the turmoil of the 1960s to tell us something — and it was lost to history. I have tried to recreate it for […]
Dr. King, “Sincere Ignorance,” and the Work of Becoming Intelligent There’s a moment I keep returning to—quiet, ordinary, and surprisingly revealing. A conversation starts with goodwill. People want fairness. They want safety. They want to be decent. Then the same pattern appears facts arrive without their context, a few details get trimmed, and the outcome […]
Let Me Listen: A Love Letter to Shared Humanity (and What It Asks of Us There’s a particular kind of courage in saying: let me listen. Not “let me fix.” Not “let me respond.” Not even “let me impress you with my empathy.” Just… listen. In a poem by Charles Anthony Silvestri (2022), that invitation […]
