There is a picture my mother drew of my father in his studio. He is standing at the canvas with a brush in his hand, but he is not painting. He is looking. Just looking. My mother told me once that the hardest thing about being an artist is not the making — it is […]
A CONVERSATION WITH DR. DON AJENÉ WILCOXSON · PART THREE OF THREE When the Whisper Is Louder Than the Fear On racial injustice, the cost of standing up, and what he wants to say to everyone at the edge of the room There is a particular kind of courage that does not announce itself. It […]
A CONVERSATION WITH DR. DON AJENÉ WILCOXSON · PART TWO OF THREE A Man Who Stands in the Room On teaching, spiritual direction, and what it means to carry many callings at once There is a question I have wanted to ask Ajené for years, and as we continue our 3 part conversation I finally […]
Post One: The Garden He Grew From Formation, the village of mentors, and the name given by a king Post Two: A Man Who Stands in the Room Teaching, spiritual direction, EQ practice, and the soul-centered integrated life Post Three: When the Whisper Is Louder Than the Fear Racial injustice, the cost of speaking, grief, […]
When You Know Why You React, You Can Choose How You Respond What the Enneagram and emotional intelligence reveal about the space between trigger and response There is a photograph I keep coming back to in my mind — not an actual photograph, but the kind that forms over years of sitting across from people […]
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 […]
