On a whim…

It’s been a year.

Both of us were treated for cancer.
She also underwent a heart procedure.

And still—
we made it to the Azores.
We found rest for a while in Boothbay Harbor.

I began my first novel and am close to finishing it: 37 chapters, 147,500 words.
I started drafting two more.
The second is emerging quickly, with its hinge chapters complete.
The third is conceptually structured, waiting its turn.

I’m wrapping up a devotional guide for Lent.
I’ve been publishing small pieces—one or two most weeks.

My writing coach keeps urging me to slow down, reminding me that as cancer treatment continues, the emotional cost of writing increases.

She said:
Protecting your pace right now is the same as
resting between surgical cuts,
letting a bruise declare itself before touching it again.

Ignore this and you’ll still be productive—
but the book would begin extracting something from you it has no right to take.

So I’m learning to tell the truth about limits.
Not to stop.
Not to hurry.
But to refuse any work that asks for more than it is given.

Still here.
Still listening.
Still writing.

There is a kind of fullness that doesn’t feel like happiness and doesn’t ask to be.

It isn’t sweet. It isn’t savory.

It simply rests.

Tonight I feel absence more clearly—not only my own, but the quiet spaces carried by people I love and others I care about. Some have lost children. Some have buried spouses. Some have said goodbye to friends only days ago. Some may not feel anything sharp at all—only a hush they can’t quite name.

I don’t know what anyone else is carrying tonight. I don’t even know that they are struggling. But I know that if I were standing where they stand, this night would ask something of me.

I sat with family today, grateful and at peace, and still aware that the deepest part of me was keeping watch elsewhere. Not lost. Not lonely. Just faithful—to love that has shaped a life, and to lives shaped by love that did not end when death arrived.

This isn’t grief that wants to be fixed.

It’s recognition.

I’m learning that much of what draws me to write is not the need to be understood, but the hope of finding witnesses—people willing to stand quietly together and notice what still abides. How love, once fully given, continues to act in the world through memory, attention, and changed lives.

If something in these words feels familiar to you tonight—unnamed but steady—know this: you are not behind, and you are not alone. Some things do not pass. They remain. And learning to live with them is its own kind of peace.

Christmas does not arrive in triumph.
It arrives in peril.

A child born to frightened parents.
A promise given without guarantees.
Power revealed not in taking, but in bearing.

Tonight, the world still trembles under lies told for safety’s sake.
Still mistakes strength for domination.
Still prefers what can be seized to what must be received.

And yet—
God comes anyway.
Unarmed.
Truthful.
Willing to carry what we cannot.

This is the joy of Christmas.
Not loud.
Not sentimental.
But faithful.

May we receive it in truth.

Fine, and Also Not Fine: Learning to Live in the Truth of “OK”

People ask how I’m doing, and I say I’m fine.

And in a narrow sense, I mean it.

What they’re usually asking—quietly, indirectly—is whether I’m frightened by a medical diagnosis. If that’s the question, then yes, I’m fine. I’m steady. I’m not hiding under the covers. I’m not waiting for catastrophe.

But if people knew the deeper question—

Are you untroubled? Are you your usual self? Are you moving through the world the way you used to?—

I suspect they wouldn’t ask it. And if they did, then finally, I could answer honestly:

No, I’m not fine.

But I am OK.

And OK, for me, means something like readiness. It means accepting the whole terrain—life, uncertainty, endings, beginnings—and still being able to write my way through it. OK means: I’m present. I’m listening. I’m awake to what matters.

The truth is, my single source of anxiety right now is not mortality—it’s finishing the work I’ve begun.

That might sound strange, but I feel more alive in the writing than anywhere else. Not drained—energized. Not collapsing—expanded. It’s the kind of aliveness that brings tears the way Mahler’s Resurrection Symphony brings tears, or Turandot, or remembering the first time you stood before Monet’s water lilies. Tears that arrive because something beautiful just told the truth.

No one rushes in to diagnose you when you cry at art.

No one prescribes counseling because you were moved by wonder.

For too long, I practiced the art of locking everything down—the quiet discipline of emotional tidiness. But now when I write, if I stumble onto an image that rings clear and honest, how could I not weep? If I didn’t, I’d wonder whether the writing had lost its pulse.

And so tonight, I find myself tired.

Not from overwork.

Not from illness.

Not from fear.

I’m tired from being misunderstood.

I used to imagine the “solitary life” of a writer as long hours in a quiet room. But now I see it differently: solitude is what happens when your inner truth no longer fits into the questions people know how to ask.

Even so—I return to the page.

Because I’m not fine.

Because I am OK.

And because writing, for however many days I’m given, is the most alive I have ever felt.

.

Every human being has a duty to humanity.
That’s not a slogan. It’s a fact.

We like to imagine duty belongs to the ones in uniform — soldiers, officers, firefighters — the ones who put themselves between us and danger. And we tell them, “Thank you for your service.”

But if I’m honest, I hear something else under those words:
“Thank God you did it, so I didn’t have to.”

That’s not gratitude. That’s relief wearing the mask of virtue.

Their duty does not excuse ours.
Their courage does not cancel our obligation.

Every parent, every citizen, every neighbor — every human — carries a duty that can’t be delegated:
the duty to act humanely toward other humans.

Once upon a time we knew the rule:
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

Now, too often, the rule is this:
Do unto them what you imagine they’ve done unto you.

That’s not righteousness. That’s rot.
And if we keep walking that road — nursing our injuries, feeding on resentment, and calling it justice — we’ll damn ourselves.

And when we finally reach hell’s gate, even hell itself may whisper,
You’re too far gone to live here.

⸻