Quotidian.  I read that word in an essay I critiqued during my first semester in my MFA in writing program. I had to look it up.  Ironically, it’s a fancy word for something that’s not, well, very fancy.  Here’s how the New Oxford American Dictionary defines it:

quotidian |kwōˈtidēən|

adjective [ attrib. ]

• of or occurring every day; daily : the car sped noisily off through the quotidian…

On a recent New Yorker podcast, writer Tony Earley read and discussed Robert Maxwell's short story, "Love."  It’s not what you think. Well, the story is about love, the love of a…

Grounded.  That’s the word I heard over and over at a recent Quaker Silent Retreat. During introductions before we entered into forty hours of silence, many of the twenty people in attendance said they had come with a hope of getting grounded. Many spoke of the annual retreat as a time to regain the Center…

As far as I’m concerned, the world could use a few more spiritual memoirs. A lot more people of faith writing about their spiritual journeys.  Fortunately, lifelong Quaker Lynn Waddington did just that during the final two years of her life. And her partner, Margaret Sorrel, labored through her own grief after Lynn’s…

A new edition of Juliet Barker’s 1994 biography, The Brontës, tells a story about Branwell, the brother of Charlotte, Emily and Anne.

In 1834, Branwell began to study painting with a member of the Royal Academy of Art. The student painter sketched a portrait of his sisters and…

The subject line of a recent e-mail from Friend Jon Watts caught my attention:  Can I Continue to Be A Musician? 

This Quaker singer and songwriter explained he’s at a crossroads after four years of ministry through music and the success of his latest album, “Clothe Yourself in Righteousness.”  Even more than any of his previous works, Jon’s latest explores faithful Quaker practice and serious transformation.  He’s had great turnouts at concerts and good sales of his music. …

 Early Quakers likely would have been shaking their heads if they’d attended meeting with me last Sunday. Some present-day Friends might find my meeting’s last-Sunday-of-the-month practice peculiar, too. That’s when, instead of an hour of unprogrammed worship, people of all ages in our group worship through song.

 Singer and song-writer Peter Blood understands singing and worship. He and his partner, Annie Patterson, co-created Rise…

People think of Quakers as loving, peaceful, friendly types (our full name is, after all, the Religious Society of Friends).  And we are all of those things. We’re also human—full of imperfections, confusion, and fear. We don’t all see things in the same way, and our history shows that sometimes those differing views…

My rural island home in Washington State couldn’t be much further—geographically or culturally­—from Manhattan’s Wall Street.  Last fall, when the first actions of Occupy Wall Street began, the movement seemed like an abstraction to me. After hearing Madeline Schaeffer’s podcast at…

“Our lives are an apprenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn. That there is no end in nature but every end is a beginning.”

                                                              ~  Ralph Waldo Emerson…

Conflict. Disagreement. Opposing viewpoints. I don’t much like any of them, especially when they involve me and those I’m in relationship with. Some people tell me they like controversy, spirited opposition, debate and argument. They say it energizes them, excites them, gets their juices flowing. All that conflict does for me is make my stomach churn.

So, at Meeting last Sunday, when our Worship-Sharing time focused on queries about…

Ten years ago, I printed up business cards with the title Writer under my name thinking that if that’s what the card says, that’s what I am.  Now, I don't have to read that card to know that writing is my job, but some days, at the end of a writing session, I’ll leave my desk with doubts about whether I’m called…

The last day of Spring Residency for my writing program (Northwest Institute of Literary Arts), guest faculty Kathleen Dean Moore talked with the Craft of Nonfiction class about writing essays.  A philosophy professor at Oregon State University,…

Five men holding cardboard signs huddled together, urging passersby to join them in protest against financial institutions. A month earlier, they had been among hundreds of others camped out in New York City’s Zuccotti Park.  But on this biting cold post-Christmas day, they were the only ones who had ventured through the maze of metal fencing and past security guards to continue a vigil against corporate greed and social inequality. The sight of the barricade snaking around the park’s…

Just went shopping for a 2012 calendar for my office. I thumbed through a stack of them in a bin at my local bookstore, searching for a size that would fit in a small space of wall over my desk and with images that would soothe or inspire me. About midway in the pile, I found…

I appreciate Quakerism’s absence of rituals—an appreciation born from many years in the Lutheran Church, kneeling on command, singing hymns someone else chose, reciting a creed I didn’t understand, and daydreaming through mumbled invitations to communion.  We unprogrammed…

My husband and I take a right at the driveway marked by a light blue sandwich board sign:

We enter the living room of the farmhouse where our Meeting gathers every Sunday for worship. I settle into a straight-backed chair softened with an ivory sheepskin, close my eyes,…