Category: Amor
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eulogy for a baby
My baby nephew AJ died two weeks ago. His parents, my brother and his wife, asked me to give the eulogy at the funeral. One would think that distilling a life that only lasted gestation + 5 weeks could perhaps be a tricky thing, but in fact it was easy. After sifting through hundreds of…
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Grocery Store Grace
Yesterday I made a quick run to the grocery store a mile down the road, an entire world away. Instead of the fresh, organic, independent brand, small batch, sexy imported or even sexier locally produced and lovingly packaged food that I like to get at the Food CoOp, Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, most everything there…
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Third Person Love
Self-care can become a whole new world (cue Aladdin, please) when we think of ourselves in the third person. As in “I’ll bet Naomi would really love it if someone washed this three-week pile-up of dishes here in the sink for her.” Invariably, I’m willing to do an act of loving service for a friend…
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Holy Baby in Holy City or The Magic Carpet Ride that Never Happened
The streets of Old City Jerusalem wander and stagger through the covered souks of various quarters – Armenian, Muslim, Christian, Greek Orthodox. This rabbit’s warren of never-ending stall-lined streets sellis anything one could possibly want or need and has been in existence in this place, in some form or another, for literally hundreds of years.…
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On Being Single. Or rather, On Being Lonely. Because the two are not (always) the same.
I recently spent time with a friend who is grieving the death of her husband of 26 years. She noticed that we’re switching places. She is now single and I’m happily partnered up. She wanted to know if I had any tips on how to do it well. This being-single-business. I was flattered, mainly because…
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Love Is
It was a dreary, rainy, long walk in mid-Spain, mid-Camino, mid-October. Thirty or more kilometers, with at least half of it through rocky, rain-lashed fields as far as the eye could see in either direction. It was one of those stretches where all you can do is long for soup and dry socks, hope that…
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L’Chaim
“The day you cease to burn with love, many others will die of the cold.” François Mauriac Carol Burton 22 April 05:22 pm Well, this has been a long time coming, thankfully, but Tim has now entered the stage of active dying. The hospice nurse said she couldn’t give us a time frame, but it’s…
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Love at the World’s End
I have just finished walking nearly three months across France and Spain on the medieval pilgrimage trail of the Way of St James, or the Camino de Santiago and have arrived at Finisterra – what was thought to be the most western edge of the world in the Middle Ages. Turns out it’s actually Cabo da…
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On Turning 38
One week before my 38th birthday, I came home from my 38th international trip. I wanted it to mean something important. Two days before, I’d been sitting after a breakfast of mie goreng – Balinese fried rice, watching fitful, dirty morning waves on the Indian Ocean under a thick and heavy sky, annoyed that my…
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La Curvosa Peligrosa
(The Dangerous Curvy One) If you were to ask any of the women in my age bracket who their celebrity crush is, you’d get a variety of answers, but I’m sure none of them carry as bright a torch for Jack Black as I do. There’s just something about him in the role of Nacho…
Behind the Blue Door 