Dear President Trump, Lent ended months ago and I realized I’ve yet to circle back to let you know how my daily tonglen practice went those 40 days. Well, mostly it was hard. As I worked at breathing in whatever negativity I was perceiving, I struggled with both the emotional heaviness of the effort and … Continue reading Tonglen, still and yet
Positives
Treasures
Dear President Trump, Today is Laura’s birthday. She doesn’t like there to be a fuss at all so I cut some roses from our garden before she got up and put them in a vase for her along with a card I made out of an old print that had “June” incorporated into the design. … Continue reading Treasures
Jesus and Buddha would have liked each other a lot
Dear President Trump, Two days ago I discovered that someone in the next block up has a log on their front porch that’s been carved into a likeness of Jesus. The top is plain log, complete with bark and tree rings and the rest has a detailed Jesus face, neck, and upper chest carved into … Continue reading Jesus and Buddha would have liked each other a lot
The moral arc of the universe is pretty dang bumpy
Dear President Trump, Because I am, in part, using this exercise of writing to you every day to record what I’m noticing and thinking, I want to tell you about another cool bird action I saw yesterday morning in our backyard. We’ve let our little postage stamp area of grass “go meadow” so there are … Continue reading The moral arc of the universe is pretty dang bumpy
In the living room
Dear President Trump, How about we stick with the good news theme for now? During the hour between worship services the church staff and those of us on our pastor’s support team threw her a surprise party to celebrate her having finished her Doctor of Ministries degree. I didn’t think we could actually pull it … Continue reading In the living room
“Places where we can exhale”
Dear President Trump, I’ve taken most of the day off from the news so hopefully you haven’t done anything horribly nasty, scary, or egregious in the last 24 hours. You probably have, but I’m going to pretend, for now, that you haven’t and go with my plan to cover some more good news today. I … Continue reading “Places where we can exhale”
Let’s go with some good news today
Dear President Trump, I’m going to go with some bits of good news today since it really is out there and we need to not lose sight of it in the midst of all the crappy changes you’ve been putting us through all these long months. Starting close to home, yesterday in my clinical team … Continue reading Let’s go with some good news today
To yield or not to yield
Dear President Trump, Now that it’s light so late and the weather has warmed up the annual migration from indoors to outdoors is happening in our neighborhood. Kids are still in school so there’s not a ton of kid activity on the sidewalks yet, but more adults are hanging out on their porches and working … Continue reading To yield or not to yield
Safety nets for us all
Dear President Trump, I took the day off to spend time with our family from Atlanta and as luck would not have it, I spent the entire morning at the doctor’s office waiting to find out if I had something very wrong with my right eye. All last week I had more floaters than usual … Continue reading Safety nets for us all
Bearing reality and keeping hope alive
Dear President Trump, This morning I took on a slightly more ambitious run and went to visit “The Rock.” I thought I’d told you about the Rock before but I did a search and apparently I haven’t. Anyway, it’s a large glacial anomaly about the size of a small cabin in the middle of a … Continue reading Bearing reality and keeping hope alive
Daily Trump Letters 