Pamet River Books Blog

The Universe Inside

Fri, 01 May 2026 11:30:18 GMT

"Peter, you always go too far."

I don’t remember when it was that I stopped my morning runs and segued into walking. Walking? The “thrill is gone,” as the song says. But I’ve just discovered ultrawalking. And how it “makes me quiver,” as another song says.

Ultrawalking has taken a place among hiking, racewalking, and ultrarunning, and it's been quietly gaining momentum. There's no single governing body for ultrawalking, but ultrawalking events are happening globally, at distances ranging from forty miles to 100 kilometers and more.

It seems like a natural progression for me, as someone who once crossed the finish line of the New York City Marathon. Many ultrarunners walk portions of their races anyway, which included me.

But I’m wondering why. Why, when many of my friends are undergoing knee and hip replacements, am I yearning to engage in a young person’s sport?

There is something in my DNA, I know. Whenever I would set out on some new endeavor, I would always go for broke. A morning run wasn’t enough. I had to do a marathon.

My wife said more times than I counted, “Peter, you always go too far.”

It has something to do with my addictive personality. It also has to do with our species’ yearning for spaciousness.

We want to live where there is an expansive panorama – by the sea, on a mountain, at the top of a high-rise with a bird’s-eye view of the city below.

Even in America’s flat mid-west, the landscape is as vast and open as the sky. Isn’t it Montana whose license plates brand it as “Big Sky Country?”

Out-and-back running used to answer my need for spaciousness. I could lace up my trainers and transport myself five miles from my house -- and be back home before breakfast.

Catherine of Sienna described God as “a mystery as deep as the sea” as well as the “highest good,” contradictory qualifiers combining for a spot-on description.

Refer to the Hebrew scriptures to learn of “God’s mountain” where Moses accepted the Ten Commandments, as well as the ocean abyss where Jonah idled for three days in the belly of a whale.

It seems obvious that humankind has a fascination with heights and depths, breadths and widths.

My hunch is that this impulse has an inner dimension as well as an exterior one.

This inner spaciousness we typically call imagination. I prefer to think of it as my soul.

All I need to do, for example, is shut my eyes to transport myself to Florence or Bangkok or the wreck of the Titanic. This sure is easier than a ten-mile jog before breakfast.

I’m beginning to think this is where theoretical physics meets metaphysical philosophy.

Several prominent scientists, too, are putting forth the idea that our internal experience (a.k.a soul) and external reality (the universe) are governed by the same fundamental laws.

Put all this together and maybe understand why mystic Thomas Merton said God can be found deep at the very center of our soul. And maybe understand why sometimes I feel like the universe is housed inside me.

Pure Contradiction

Fri, 24 Apr 2026 19:32:07 GMT

Beauty is found in the most crushing circumstances.

One of my outreach activities for National Poetry Month this April was a workshop I guided last week on healing poetry at Mount Sinai’s Chelsea Medical Center in Manhattan.

What made this program memorable for me was meeting so many cancer patients who said their unwelcome diagnosis opened doors to new opportunities, new friends, new accomplishments – which wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

Their witness gives credence to what Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke reminds us, as saints and poets often do – that beauty can be found in the most crushing circumstances.

This was the second time I was invited to have a hand in Art Fridays, a monthly enrichment program sponsored by the Center of Excellence for Cancer Support Services at Mount Sinai Health System. The aim of Art Fridays is to nurture creativity, community, and healing for cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers.

Mount Sinai Health System comprises the Icahn School of Medicine, Phillips School of Nursing, and seven hospital campuses in the New York City area, as well as a large ambulatory presence in the region. Mount Sinai is internationally acclaimed for its excellence in research, patient care, and education across a range of specialties.

At the Icahn School of Medicine, for example, “Patient-Scientists” are central to the school’s drive to move discoveries from the laboratory to the patient's bedside rapidly and effectively.

This is the role one of the Art Fridays participants, a survivor of lung cancer, plays – serving as an advocate for the Bronx community covered by The Tisch Cancer Institute. She works to increase community education and awareness of cancer research, build trust in research, and provide feedback to the Tisch research teams.

Another Art Fridays participant, after being diagnosed with colon cancer, became energized to the point that he’s published four books, with another on the way – so far.

He brought to the workshop one of his books, a poetry collection, and gave out signed copies. These lines from one of his poems might explain his single-mindedness:

Live in the moment and enjoy each and every day. Start being appreciative. It’s a grateful heart while your time is here to stay.

So don’t get upset too frequently and waste your time.

Just take a breather and relax, and who knows, you may remember this rhyme.

These folks, and others like them, prove Rilke right. Adversity and beauty are not mutually exclusive, just as he said, even though he himself faced an early death from leukemia.

In fact, Rilke’s epitaph likened his life – which was marked with both celebrity and suffering – to a rose.

He called this delicate flower “pure contradiction,” reminding us that the fragile bloom bears painful thorns. But is, at the same time, perhaps the most beautiful of flowers.

When Sweating Blood Isn’t Enough

Fri, 17 Apr 2026 21:02:26 GMT

From Gethsemane to Gaza, prayers don’t seem to be answered.

He was sweating blood in the Garden of Gethsemane, they say, knowing he was about to be arrested, tortured, and killed. He prayed, "Father, all things are possible to you. Take this cup away." But it was not.

I was thinking about this last week when Pope Leo XIV called for a worldwide day of prayer for peace. From Gethsemane to Gaza, prayers don’t seem to be answered.

But is this true?

The effectiveness of prayer is typically questioned when our earnest petitions draw only silence from the heavens.

When I ask for the healing of a loved one who then passes away, or for the resolution of a crisis that only worsens, my natural conclusion is that prayer is as pointless as whistling past a cemetery on a dark night— both a sedative and a delusion.

If I’m looking for outright interventions into the laws of physics, which we call miracles, I’d be wiser to seek instead a steady, quiet transformation of character.

When my wife was in the last stages of her cancer, scores of her friends were praying for her.

More than remission of her disease, however, Jo Anne asked for prayers that she have courage. And as her death drew ever closer, she did show a calm courage that seemed to be, already, other-worldly.

All those prayers offered in her behalf were, in fact, efficacious.

St. Thérèse of Lisieux believed that prayer was a lever that could move the world. She didn’t mean this in a literal sense, but in the way that the love generated in prayer radiates outward, fortifying the spiritual health of the whole human family.

St. John of the Cross was a sixteenth-century Spanish mystic, priest, and poet, one of the most influential figures in Catholicism.

He seemed to be of the opinion that to continue to pray when it feels useless is the highest form of faith. Prayer in this situation is my declaration that God is God, regardless of how I feel or what I receive. My persistent prayer proves my selfless, unconditional love.

Maybe the highest value of prayer is that it connects the finite to the infinite. If I find no evidence of God hearing me, perhaps it’s because I’m looking for a God who serves me, rather than the other way around.

Christ’s prayer that the cup be taken away was unanswered. But he continued his prayer in the next sentence: “Not what I will – but what you will."

Those words gave meaning to his trauma. And that made all the difference.

The most efficacious prayer I can say just might be: "Thy will be done." When I say these words with sincerity, I can never be the same again. I’ve finally learned how to love without counting the cost.

As psychiatrist Victor Frankl found in observing his fellow prisoners in Auschwitz, if we can make sense of our suffering, then we can deal with it.

This is precisely what my prayer does and all it needs to do – help me make sense of my life.

(Image: Christ on the Mount of Olives, by Wolfgang Sauber)

Unencumbered Time

Thu, 09 Apr 2026 21:58:45 GMT

When I returned home from a spiritual retreat several years ago at the Trappist monastery in western Massachusetts, my wife asked me, “What do you do there?” I answered, “Nothing.” During my Easter retreat there last weekend I kept a journal so you can see what “nothing” looks like.

April 2, Holy Thursday

10:30am

After arriving, getting settled in the same room (named the “St. Catherine Room) I was assigned at my last retreat 11 years ago, I sat in the single upholstered chair and immediately became aware of time.

A monk calls his individual sleeping room his cell. It becomes for him a great source of comfort. Mine is simply outfitted: a single twin bed, a small desk with cane-backed chair (no thousand-dollar Aeron here), a nightstand, and three lamps for a soft wash of light conducive to tranquility. On the wall above the desk is a small crucifix and above the bed a ceramic rendering of Catherine of Sienna.

I was pleased to be with Saint Catherine again. I visited her home in Sienna many years ago, so I feel an affinity toward her, the 24th child her parents birthed, and a towering figure in the history of the Catholic Church. They preserve her severed head in one of the churches there, and I regret not having viewed it during my trip. I must go again to Sienna and also to Assisi.

But back to time. I realize how little time I dedicate in my day to just sitting to think. Yes, sit to think.

Warren Buffett:

"I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business."

12pm

Lunch: No talking. Silence. We sit at rectangular tables of four, and I was across from a woman and did not want to stare at her while I chewed, so I was forced to gaze out the window as I ate. This forced me to contemplate a fir tree, gigantic, and perfectly formed, as if by a sculptor. Without silence, without reading or watching YouTube clips, I would not have noticed the tree.

What do poets and pray-ers all join in extolling? Silence. The silence that leads to the contemplation of beauty. The world truly is “charged with the grandeur of God” – if we notice it. Perhaps it’s our inattention that causes us to consider God hidden. Obscura in the Latin.

1:00pm

I love my Catherine of Sienna cell, with a door out to a small, fenced-in garden. No flowers or vegetables, just a carpet of grass greening up with the warming temperatures, and a low perennial bush of some sort. I could live here.

An hour until None at 2:30. What to do with this unencumbered time?

2:30pm

What did I do? I dozed, accidentally slipping away into a refreshing half-hour or so of sleep. (I got to sleep past midnight yesterday after commuting to Hope Lodge in Manhattan to teach healing poetry to their cancer patients.)

Prayed None on my own rather than get over to the monastery church in the rain. It was the right thing to do because in the quiet calm of my cell, these moving words of Psalm 54 rang out: “If this had been done by an enemy, I could bear it. But it is you, my own companion, my intimate friend!”

It caused me to realize how my betrayals have hurt others.

3 :00pm

Chatted with my friend Ed, who volunteers here. We became pals during my prior retreats and he follows my weekly blog without fail. I called him my groupie. We washed the dishes together, and I took over from him the task of lifting heavy racks of dishes into and out of the sanitizer. I joked about it so he wouldn’t feel lessened: “I’m Ukrainian. We’re strong.” It turns out, Ed confided, he has Parkinson’s.

4:00pm

We retreatants ( there are eleven or twelve 12 of us) trooped to the church for the solemn Mass of the Lord’s Supper, which commemorates the Passover meal during which Christ washed the feet of his disciples, instituted the Eucharist (“Do this in memory of me.”), and repeated his one great commandment to us: love one another.

I was taken by how slowly the prayers of this Mass were said, compared to the twenty-minute Masses we get in many parish churches. These monks celebrate the Mass daily, year after year, but do not get bored with it or lackadaisical about it.

Next up: supper of ham and cheese on pumpernickel. Followed by Compline in the church to end the day.

6:30pm

The monks can stretch a twenty-minute Mass to an hour and twenty. Supper, on the other hand, was over in twenty minutes. Maybe because the sandwiches contain one slice of ham and one slice of cheese. I wouldn’t call it a sandwich. Maybe a heavy hors d'oeuvre .

I impressed myself with how quickly I can come to dislike someone. We sit at tables of four in the refectory, as I said. Next to me tonight was a slim woman dressed for a yoga class, all in form-fitting black Spandex. In a monastery? She slurped her soup. And she would stop eating after two or three bites and just sit there staring at her plate for a full minute. It must be some hack she does to control her appetite, which would explain the trim figure. To think that only minutes before I had been pondering Christ’s prime directive – love one another.

April 3, Good Friday

5:30am

Don’t try to tell me my body clock and the spinning of the planet are not in some kind of cahoots. The first service of the day, Vigils, was scheduled for 4:30am. So I set my iPhone alarm for 4 o’clock. I awoke in my pitch-black cell at 3:59.

The monks’ chanting of the psalms and antiphons this morning was arresting. Especially the words, “They led him like a lamb to the slaughter.” Because it’s Good Friday, marking the torture and killing of Christ, passages are chanted from the Hebrew Scriptures’ book of "Lamentations," attributed to the prophet Jeremiah.

“Time” is again, or still, on my mind. How, as we age, we need to sleep less and less, as if we want to spend as many of our remaining hours awake and active, squeezing out the final drops of living left to us.

I have a poem percolating – something about time. And the idea of “unencumbered” hours. But this is a complex subject and I doubt I’m intellectually up to it.

Snow forecast this morning for these high hills of western Massachusetts. The walk from the retreat house to the church was dark, wet, and raw. The lights of Worchester on the distant horizon through the mist. My kind of weather!

When I returned from Vigils, the retreat house and refectory were dark, but I was able to glean a cup of coffee from yesterday’s remains in the refectory thermos, and I found a microwave in the kitchen to make it palatable. I’m a happy camper, considering it’s Good Friday, with crucifixion on the mind.

I was stopped cold at these words from " Lamentations ," referring to the ruin of Jerusalem by the Babylonians:

Is there any pain like my pain,

which has been ruthlessly inflicted upon me,

With which the LORD has tormented me

on the day of his blazing wrath?

From on high he hurled fire down

into my very bones;

He has left me desolate,

in misery all day long.

I wonder how the modern state of Israel, having such pain in their history, can bring themselves to inflict the same on their neighbors, especially the innocent women and children of Gaza. How do the Israelis reconcile their “hurling down of fire from on high?”

9:30am

Without Ed onsite today to take care of us retreatants, the monks, left to their own devices, essentially forgot about us. No one was here to escort us through the cloisters to the church for Lauds at 7:40. No one here to prepare breakfast. Guest what? We took care of ourselves. Found the chilled eggs and yogurt in the fridge. Ate and cleaned up after ourselves. A monk finally came to the refectory and apologized. It seems whoever was assigned to us this morning didn’t show.

11:50am

Spent the morning in my cell reading – The Naked Now by typically obscure Richard Rohr ranting about his non-dualistic view of the world – and trying to capture the poem about time that has been poking at me since yesterday. I tried to just get some words down:

Unencumbered

Is sitting to think for an hour merely

a euphemism for daydreaming?

If so, is that so bad? Tell me,

what else should I have done?

So bask in it, bathe in it, for dreaming

is a euphemism for hope, after all,

and hope is all we have as humans.

The unencumbered hour is a consummation

devoutly to be desired, what with guns and

bombs and CNN unbounded. A jug of wine,

a loaf of bread and thou are no substitute

for a latte grande, a brace of almond biscotti –

and a ready laptop atop my tabletop in the

Starbucks at 34th and Fifth.

You can’t paraphrase a poem or sculpt time

to your preference, though you try. No.

Deal with it on time’s terms, and daydream

all you can while you can.

The poetry attempt came out tongue-in-cheek. I don’t know if I like it. It doesn’t make my nipples hard.

Noon

Tasty lunch of curried vegetable soup, salmon in a dill sauce, and couscous. Afterwards I cut a thick slice of the banana bread still sitting out from breakfast and sneaked it to my cell where I had my way with it. This was totally off my plan to forsake sugar.

Our lunch monk played an audiobook of Thomas Merton’s No Man Is an Island (did I mention we eat in silence?). A woman across the table exchanged raised eyebrows with me at some of the nonsense coming out of Merton’s mouth. When we got up from the table and started the clean-up, I whispered to her my opinion that Merton is overrated because people don’t understand half of what he’s saying so they think he must be brilliant. But royalties from his dozens of books are bringing in a lot of revenue for the Trappists. This woman and I have formed a tacit bond because we teamed yesterday over washing the lunch dishes. Or it could be just the kavorka acting up again. It’s such a burden.

Between the banana bread and surreptitiously talking to the woman when we are supposed to maintain silence, I’ve been my usual naughty and obstreperous self. Or, as my wife used to say, “such a boy.”

Good Friday Mass will be at 3pm, the hour Christ died on the cross. Compared to yesterday’s schedule, they’ve left an extra hour for this Mass before supper at 6pm. I think this service is going to be a marathon. I’d better use the bathroom before heading over to the church. Until then, I’ll meditate on "Lamentations" to make up for my lunchtime failings.

7:00pm

Yup, I was right. It was more than a Mass. It was a Good Friday service. Two hours on the nose. And the Latins make fun of Ukrainian liturgies that often last two hours.

What was ridiculous was the guy who came into the church last minute and plopped himself in front of me. For this Good Friday service the monastery church is open to local residents. So it was pretty crowded. This guy had to be 6’5”. The bigger distraction was the sweat shirt he wore – to attend Good Friday in a monastery. On the back was silk-screened this stupid phrase: "To the person behind me, the world is a better place with you in it. Love, the person in front of you." I had this in my face for two hours.

Supper made up for it: New England clam chowder (my fav) and spinach pie. Both excellent.

Lights out at 8pm. Just like at home.

April 4, Holy Saturday

8:00am

I’m having a difficult time sleeping here because the bed is too soft, it’s up against the wall, and it’s twin size. The temperature is either too hot or too cold. The blanket and bedspread make me skeev. So I woke almost every hour and at one o’clock I was awake till almost three. As a result, when I did fall asleep I slept through Vigils at 3:30. But I woke in time for Lauds at 6:40. It really makes no difference because as lovely as the sound of the monks’ Gregorian Chant, I can’t understand a word of what they’re saying, even though it’s English.

Breakfast followed, with a continuation of Thomas Merton’s No Man Is an Island . He sounds so dated, talking about gin and cigarettes and “man” this and “man” that.

Today I can no longer stand Tall Boy. That’s the name I’ve given to a young man, maybe twenty-ish, who is about eight feet tall. He might be a seminarian, attending on his own. He has sat across from me at two meals, now, and I can’t help but observe his preposterous feeding. Last night, for instance, he had a second helping of roasted potatoes along with the spinach pie, followed by a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This morning he scarfed two PB sandwiches and two slices of breakfast cake. I, on the other hand, had chilled eggs and dry, untoasted whole wheat bread. He has no belly. He’s just metabolism on steroids as I was at his age. What did me in, though, was in the silence after we finished eating and were waiting for the monk to offer a concluding prayer, he sat there slurping his coffee. Another slurper! The thing is, it’s so awkward to sit directly across from someone without conversation. You don’t know where to look. In most refectories I’ve seen, people sit on one side of a long table, not across from one another.

Holy Saturday is a time to think about Christ dead in his tomb. So everything essentially stops. Even the bell doesn’t ring today to call us to prayer. A monk will hear confessions at 9:30, and the only community service will be Vespers at 5:40. But we get up tomorrow morning about 2:30 for the solemn Easter Mass at 3am.

2:30pm

This is how it happens. You change your routine for a few days or a week. Go somewhere far from home. Mix with people you don’t know but with whom you share certain values and worldviews. And you start to make resolutions to change the way you’ve been conducting yourself.

In my case, it’s the new-found time I have here to just be. No deadlines, nothing to prepare, no next meal to shop for or prepare. And I’m resolved to bring this gift of time home with me. My immediate idea – to dedicate much of my afternoons to just be. To read. To think.

5:40pm

When I visited the gift shop earlier this afternoon I found an anthology of poetry by Christian Americans. At the 5:40 Vespers, the thought came to my wandering mind that I should restrict my teaching to healing poetry, not poetry as prayer. What I can and should do is a unit on how to apply or write poems as prayer. This makes a lot more sense to me, and is more in keeping with what I am academically qualified to teach.

April 5, Easter Sunday

9:45am

Vigil Mass at 3am lasted until 5:45. Quite the affair. A blazing fire in their walk-in fireplace, a candle-lit procession, close to ten scripture readings and some nice singing by the monks. I skipped Lauds in favor of a chair doze.

Breakfast following Lauds sucked. Cold eggs, cold butter, stale bread. I am tempted to leave for home now, skipping their luncheon “Easter feast,” and beating the forecasted heavy rain. But I won’t, even though I’m already packed.

My anger caused me to start “working” again – tinkering with my script for the healing poetry program I will lead at Wisdom House all day Friday. But I was able to stop by reminding myself I‘m not here to work, but to BE. So I’m returning to this journal to try to make some sense of the past three days of living like a monk.

So . . .

1. I’ve already written about my new perspective on time. Yesterday I wrote a new version (the 200th?) of my daily routine, this one to make room to be.

2. I’ve been reading The Christian Poetry in America poems and was reminded to write more metaphor into my poems. And more story. Many of the anthologized poems are so expository!

3. I think, too, that I’m finished with Facebook and with news. They just upset me. Facebook was originally supposed to connect me to friends. No longer. It’s one advertisement or falsity after another, with hardly any friend posts at all. There is very little going on in the world day-to-day that I need to know in order to live my life.

I attended my second Mass of the day at 11am. The 3am Mass was a “vigil” marking the night Christ actually walked out of his tomb, while the 11am Mass celebrates Resurrection Day.

And I’m glad I stayed for lunch. We're allowed to talk, now, and I sat with Mike, the volunteer who took care of us retreatants today. Turns out his wife has cancer, and writes some poetry. When I arrived back home Sunday afternoon I sent her an email inviting her to join my merry band of Wednesday Zoomshop “trauma poets.”

Running Late

Tue, 31 Mar 2026 18:33:25 GMT

I am on a pre-Easter retreat –Thursday to Sunday – at the Trappist monastery in Spencer, Massachusetts, so I’m posting this essay from October 2015 because it does a decent job of capturing the experience as well as my mindset a decade ago.

I’ve exhausted whole decades of my career running from project to project, meeting to meeting, event to event, commitment to commitment. Running, so I wouldn’t be late.

Now, as I celebrate a birthday whose number is as revolting as Voldemort, I am still running: two bed-and-breakfasts . . . two books published in the past year and five more in various stages of development . . . a weekly blog posting . . . a weekly column in an online magazine . . . three corporate clients on two coasts.

I am running to do it all—before the time comes for me to go. I hope to catch up with myself during these days of silence..

Thomas J. Watson, Sr., transformed the tiny Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company into what was once the world’s most revered corporation—IBM. His slogan, which was the centerpiece of all the company’s endeavors, from research to sales to service, was the simple, single word: THINK.

I spent almost twenty years at IBM with the ubiquitous THINK slogan font of mind.

Tom Watson isn’t the only business superstar who paid obeisance to the worth of formalized thinking. Here’s what Warren Buffett—arguably history’s most successful equities investor—has to say:

"I insist on a lot of time being spent, almost every day, to just sit and think. That is very uncommon in American business."

I wish he had shared that thought with me a long time ago.

To quote Thomas Merton, that most famous Trappist monk:

“What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?”

In my novella, Billy of the Tulips, a teenaged boy, tormented by a brutish father, finds peace in “an inner room, in his mind and in his heart, where he hid his thoughts and where he kept his affections. This room was always with him, wherever he was, and it was always a secret place, where only God entered.”

During the coming week, I will try to cross that abyss and find my inner room.

Stuck Between Starshine and Clay

Fri, 27 Mar 2026 12:18:18 GMT

How to soften despair in an era of chaos

A five-legged, faceless, spider-like alien, Rocky became a pop-culture icon within days of his Hollywood introduction to America – a sidekick some movie viewers say they'd “take a bullet for.” As someone who saw the flick yesterday, I say, “Just shoot me.”

Rocky (pictured above) stars in the new sci-fi flick, “Project Hail Mary,” the highest-grossing movie opening of 2026, with a worldwide take already totaling $157.3 million during its first week.

Have we lost all sense?

No. it’s not us to blame for our headlong rush toward escapism. It’s the non-stop stress, anxiety, and emotional trauma afflicting us wherever we turn.

Our screens are tending toward wall-to-wall video reports of combatants “blowing stuff up.” No mention of the concern that the “stuff” being blown up includes human beings – most of them innocent civilians just like us, who want no part of what’s going on.

Then there’s the price of gasoline, and the price groceries, and the price of . . . .

During World War II, audiences flocked to movies that helped them forget – at least for a few hours – their ration books, air-raid drills, and casualty counts.

If you didn’t know: Bambi was born in 1942, the height of the war.

One way to soften our despair is to engage in doing things that give us a sense of accomplishment and completion, writes poet James Crews.

“At a time of chaos and uncertainty, what is most medicinal may be for us to control the flow of our attention. When we are talking with a good friend on the phone, raking the yard, or watching a bird cross from tree branch to feeder, we give ourselves the gift of inner space and the kind of deep stillness that seems extinct these days.”

Inconsequential, perhaps, but essential. Because according to poet Mary Oliver, paying attention is akin to devotion – a kind of praying. She writes:

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Lucille Clifton was another poet who summoned us to persist in the face of our personal challenges – in her case, being black, female, and poor.

In what is perhaps her most famous poem, she pictures our current dilemma as being stuck between the starshine of noble aspirations and the clay of corrupt governance that stomps our craved nobility into the ground. She writes:

. . . i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.

She defined her life as a daily call to survive against a world out to erase her. She answered by insisting on simply being. On persisting.

Twice Dead

Fri, 20 Mar 2026 12:16:29 GMT

They say we die twice: once when we stop breathing, and again when our name is spoken for the last time. Today, on the anniversary of my wife’s birth, her friends, family, and I will speak her name yet again. Jo Anne.

My daughter, Julie, captured this idea in a birthday reflection she wrote after Jo Anne’s death in December 2015:

A year ago, Mom called to wish me a Happy Birthday, as usual.

And she started telling me the story of the day I was born: how she was at Woolworth’s on a beautiful spring-like day (like today), buying buttons for a sweater she had just finished knitting, and felt a little something like she’d need to go to the hospital soon.

She waited for Dad to come home from work, and made all the arrangements for someone to watch Wendy while Dad took her to the hospital. And just a little while later, there I was.

And I started to tease her, telling the story along with her, because she’d told me the same story every year, on my birthday.

Then she told me why she kept telling the story: because when Grandpa had died (many years after Nana), she felt that no one in the world was left to remember the day she was born.

In our high-speed culture, grief is too often treated as a disorder to be rid of. We’re expected to “get over it” and return to normal productivity within days. This is where the wisdom of the yahrzeit can apply – for everyone, regardless of faith.

Observing a deceased beloved’s annual date of death was first practiced in the Middle Ages. It melds three aspects:

1. Ascent. Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, holds that on the anniversary of a death, the soul reaches a higher level of spiritual elevation. Actions of the living – praying, doing something charitable in the deceased’s name, lighting a candle – fuel this ascent.

2. Prayer. In reciting the Kaddish prayer – which praises life and the Divine in the face of loss – the mourner testifies that their loved one’s death has not led to despair, but to continued faith.

3. Light. Burning a twenty-four-hour Yahrzeit candle comes from the Book of Proverbs: "The soul of man is the candle of God."

In my nuclear family, we put more significance on the day of birth over the date of death. But our observances are amazingly similar to the Jewish yahrzeit.

1. Ascent. We pray for the deceased, offer a charitable donation in their name, that they find rest with the Divine.

2. Prayer. Just as the Kaddish is a public sanctification, we sanctify the memory of the deceased through the celebration of the Eucharist. On November 2 each year, Catholic churches offer Mass in remembrance of all our departed.

3. Light. We light a votive candle before a statue or icon. Like the yahrzeit candle, it doesn't just represent the soul that left – it also lights the path for those of us who remain behind. It is our way of saying: “You are still making our world brighter.”

Among us Ukrainians, we seldom use the word dying. Rather, we say someone has fallen asleep in the Lord. This phrase was used by Christ and his early followers as a direct reflection of belief in resurrection.

This concept must have rung true to Jo Anne because among her last words were: “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

Misery

Fri, 13 Mar 2026 06:52:32 GMT

Man's inhumanity to woman

You might find this hard to believe, but I just got around to watching the 1990 classic movie, “Misery.” I have news for you. It’s not all that far from reality.

The plot: Best-selling novelist Paul Sheldon is on his way home from his Colorado hideaway after completing his latest book when he crashes his car during a sudden blizzard. He’s critically injured, but is rescued by former nurse Annie Wilkes, Paul's "number one fan," who takes him to her remote house in the mountains to care for him until the blizzard clears (without bothering to tell anybody). Unfortunately for Paul, Annie is also insane. When she discovers that Paul has killed off the heroine in her favorite novels, her reaction leaves Paul shattered (literally).

Among the macho screen idols who declined the role of Paul Sheldon before it was offered to James Caan: Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Robert De Niro, Michael Douglas, Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, Mel Gibson, Gene Hackman, Dustin Hoffman, William Hurt (twice), Kevin Kline, Al Pacino, Robert Redford, Denzel Washington, and Bruce Willis.

The buzz is that these A-list actors refused the role because it cast them in a passive, subservient role, spending most of the movie abed, being tortured by Nurse Wilkes.

A pivotal scene in the movie comes when Kathy Bates, who won the best actress Oscar for her portrayal, forces Paul Sheldon – under threat of death – to burn the only manuscript of his just-completed new novel because the dialogue is too coarse for her Christian sensibilities.

As you can imagine, the writer is anguished to see his irreplaceable pages go up in a ferocious blaze.

But it’s only a movie, you say. Awful things like this could never happen in real life. Ah, but they do. I’ll tell you about two.

The first involves the late Lucille Clifton, who was poet laureate of Maryland.

Clifton’s mother was a woman gifted with a poetic bent. She wrote poems despite a home life dominated by the demands of a harsh husband, who saw her writing as a threat to her wifely duties. He eventually forced her to burn her manuscripts, silencing her creative voice and turning her art into ash.

Lucille Clifton often spoke of this moment as a trauma that shaped her own work as a poet. She wrote, she said, in honor of her mother’s forced poetic silence. Clifton’s entire body of work can be seen as a response. "I write to keep my mother from being forgotten,” she said.

Here is Lucille Clifton’s "fury," from her 1987 collection, Next.

fury

for mama

remember this.

she is standing by

the furnace.

the coals

glisten like rubies.

her hand is crying.

her hand is clutching

a sheaf of papers.

poems.

she gives them up.

they burn

jewels into jewels.

her eyes are animals.

each hank of her hair

is a serpent's obedient

wife.

she will never recover.

remember. there is nothing

you will not bear

for this woman's sake.

The second demonstration of man’s inhumanity to woman was told to me by one of the patients in my poetry class at New York City’s Hope Lodge, operated by the American Cancer Society.

She was a middle-aged Puerto Rican woman who had been writing poems for years in a notebook she prized. During an argument, she said, her husband wrested the notebook from her and burned it.

It’s always a man threatened by a woman’s creativity or independence who strikes at the most vulnerable and irretrievable fruit of a woman of soul.

This situation is reversed in “Misery,” with the woman ordering the destruction of the man’s creative product.

But there’s a happy Hollywood ending to the movie. It’s the woman who lies on the floor open-eyed dead. The man goes on. What did you expect?

Soul Friends

Thu, 05 Mar 2026 18:52:39 GMT

I never referred to my wife as my best friend. I thought it was an odd phrasing to apply to a spouse. “Friends” were Vic and Chuck and Bill. My wife was, well—my wife. An intimate connection far beyond friendship.

Now, long after her death, I understand that perhaps our marriage endured precisely because she was my best friend.

I’ve come to see that friendship is like holding a bird in your hand. Squeeze too tightly and you will smother it. Pay it too little heed and it will fly away.

Writer Simone de Beauvoir asked women:

Why one man rather than another? It was odd. You find yourself involved with a fellow for life just because he was the one that you met when you were nineteen.

My wife was nineteen when we met, both of us students at Fordham. And, for better or worse, she found herself involved with me for life.

All this was on my mind when I attended a day-long seminar titled, “Pursuing Relationships that Enlighten our Lives.”

The presenter was Sophfronia Scott, a novelist, essayist, and contemplative thinker.

The first thing she did was introduce us to the concept of anam cara . This is a Celtic description of a “soul friend,” defined as someone who tells you something about yourself that changes you.

Vic Dougherty was the first person outside my family circle who did this for me.

When I became an altar server at about the age of nine, I was paired with Vic, three years older than I and a “veteran” altar server who would teach me the ins and outs of hand bells, thuribles, and the proper hierarchical order of processions.

But he did more than mentor me in the ways of sacristies and sanctuaries. Vic shaped my early years by teaching me things about myself:

• My company is enjoyable

• I am likeable

• I am trustworthy

He’s been my friend through my entire life, no matter where job, wife, or geography took us.

But. There’s always a “but,” isn’t there?

I never told all this to Vic.

This blunder on my part came crashing down on me as Ms. Scott unveiled her primary principle in nurturing relationships.

It is a plain-spoken directive articulated so memorably in Arther Miller’s classic Death of a Salesman: “Attention must be paid.”

The mother in that famous play was speaking to her indifferent sons about the way they needed to treat their father.

At the seminar, however, many of the other participants at the seminar described relationships with “best friends” that began in youth and endured for decades – just like my friendship with Vic.

And to a person, they each answered “no” to Sophfronia’s question, “Did you tell them?”

Her other questions were equally probing:

• Where am I inattentive in a relationship?

• What would disciplined attention look like?

• Do I reach out to my friends to listen to them?

All this is a far cry from the Bud Light “ I Love You, Man ” campaign during the mid-to-late 1990s.

The commercials centered on a guy named Johnny who would go to overly emotional lengths to suck up to people — all in a desperate but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to get them to share their beer.

"You're not getting my Bud Light," they’d all say, seeing through his phony affection.

Hey, Vic, if you’re reading this blog, this Bud’s for you, man!

“They Don’t Like Poetry”

Thu, 26 Feb 2026 21:27:08 GMT

In Manhattan last week, I talked to a woman from Alabama who said her book club had read a Billy Collins poetry collection, and it was not a good meeting. “They don’t like poetry,” she explained.

I don’t think the fault for the bum book club session lay with Mr. Collins.

For the past two decades, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins has been considered the most popular poet in America. His collections regularly become bestsellers, sometimes breaking sales records for poetry.

But the Alabama woman’s comment about not liking poetry speaks truth. Poetry too often feels like an insider’s club.

Which vexes me, what with National Poetry Month coming up in April. Because for the past three years I’ve been guiding people in writing poetry to ease the stress, anxiety and trauma of emotional pain – especially cancer patients and their caregivers.

We talk about:

• What poetry is, how it’s different from prose and journaling, how to write a healing poem

• Ways to use poetry to intentionally move our feelings toward acceptance, gratitude and empowerment

• How writing poetry helps overcome loneliness

During the retreats, workshops and Zoom meetings I lead, I’ve witnessed the power of poetry to affect lives for the positive in near-magical ways.

Why do people say they don’t like poetry? Here’s what we’re told:

• It’s pretentious, because poetic language isn’t how people speak

• It’s obscure, as if the author is intentionally trying to hide the meaning

• It’s boring, in a whirlwind world of scrolling and skimming

I myself blame high school English teachers, many of whom made us read centuries-old poems and then tortured us by asking over and over what the poet “meant.”

Collins, a college teacher himself, agrees with me, saying high school is often "where the love of poetry goes to die."

He believes that "interrogating" poems in the classroom is exactly what makes students hate them. He wants poems to be "listened to" like a song.

So as Poet Laureate from 2001 to 2003 he launched "Poetry 180" to reintroduce poetry to high school students not as a subject to be studied for a grade, but as a welcome daily experience.

"Poetry 180" ground rules:

• One poem is read every day over the school’s public address system or in a homeroom (the name comes from the 180 days of the school year)

• There’s no discussion, and the teacher isn’t allowed to ask, "What does the blue sky mean?"

• There are no tests, and students aren't required to write essays about them

Collins personally selected the initial list of 180 poems, choosing poems based on accessibility:

• Most are by living poets, avoiding the “dead poets” barrier that alienates many teens

• They start with a recognizable situation (like a breakup, a car ride, a grocery store)

• They are short enough to be read in about a minute, and clear enough to be understood on the first listen

The first poem chosen to kick off the program was one of his own:

Introduction to Poetry

By Billy Collins

I ask them to take a poem and hold it up to the light like a color slide

or press an ear against its hive.

I say drop a mouse into a poem and watch him probe his way out,

or walk inside the poem’s room and feel the walls for a light switch.

I want them to waterski across the surface of a poem waving at the author’s name on the shore.

But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.

They begin beating it with a hose to find out what it really means.

The original list of "Poetry 180" poems is available from the Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/programs/poetry-and-literature/poet-laureate/poet-laureate-projects/poetry-180/all-poems/

The Current Schedule for My National Poetry Month Outreach

April 10: Healing poetry workshop at Mount Sinai Health System’s “Art Friday” in New York City

April 14: One-day healing poetry workshop at Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center in Litchfield, CT

April 2, 9, 16, 23, 30: One-hour healing poetry classes at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge in New York City

April 15 and 29: My “Healing Verses” regularly scheduled Wednesday workshops via Zoom

May 8, 15, 12, 29: Healing poetry workshop series via Zoom and onsite at Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center in Litchfield, CT

To join me in person or participate via Zoom, email me for details:

peterwyaremko@gmail.com

Absent from the Wedding Feast

Fri, 20 Feb 2026 23:21:44 GMT

Things will only get worse

Her words struck me like the crack of a whip against my naked back.

"I'm going to see more sick kids come into the emergency department having asthma attacks and more babies born prematurely.”

That assessment came from Dr. Lisa Patel, a pediatrician and head of the Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health, adding that her colleagues will see more heart attacks and cancer.

She was talking about the repeal last week of the Supreme Court’s 2009 endangerment finding, which could erase limits on greenhouse gas pollution from cars, factories, and power plants.

I’m old enough to remember the stench emitted from the tailpipes of the pre-catalytic-converter cars of the Fifties. I’ve been to Cairo and Bangkok, where the pollution hung so heavy I could almost taste it. I’ve suffered through eye-stinging smog episodes in Los Angeles.

The Getty Images photo up top, by the way, is from a Los Angeles Magazine story updated last August, headlined, “LA Leads the Nation in Smog, As Usual.”

A Lung Association “State of the Air” report released last year found that nearly 120 million people live in areas with unhealthy air quality, and more than half of them are people of color. People of color were sixty-four percent more likely than white people to live in a county with a failing grade in at least one of the study’s pollution categories.

So, in light of last week’s repeal, I guess things will only get worse.

Which is sad, because there’s always been an inexplicable connection between humankind and nature.

We all know people, for example, who claim they find the Divine quicker in the woods than in church.

Most repellent about the attack on our environmental protection regulations is that it comes precisely as we commemorate the eight-hundredth anniversary of the death of Saint Francis of Assisi, who is famous for his unique relationship with the natural world.

Dana Gioia, who served as poet laureate of California from 2015 to 2018, says this about the famous “Canticle” written by Francis:

“This poem is the beginning of modern Italian poetry. It is the first great poem written in the language of everyday people. It is therefore the foundational text of all subsequent Italian poetry. The worldview expressed in this poem is radically innovative. You will not see any poem which expresses these ideas before this point. Francis looks at the universe and the world not as abstract entities that are governed by physical principles but as a single family united by love.”

Gaia translated the poem beautifully from medieval Italian:

The Canticle of All Creatures

Most high, all powerful, and most good Lord,

Yours are the praises, glory, honor, blessings.

Only to you, Altissimo, do they belong.

And none are worthy to pronounce Your name.

Praise to You, my Lord, for all creation,

Most specially our noble Brother Sun,

Bringing the day by which You grant us light.

He shines, so fair and radiant in his splendor,

We recognize in him, Most High, your likeness.

Praise to You, my Lord, for Sister Moon

And all the stars You set among the heavens,

Which are so precious, bright, and beautiful.

Praise to You, my Lord, for Brother Wind,

And for the air, both stormy and serene.

In every clime, You give your creatures sustenance.

Praise to You, my Lord, for Sister Water,

Who is so helpful, humble, prized, and pure.

Praise to You, my Lord, for Brother Fire,

Illuminating night for us. He is

Robust and cheerful, beautiful and strong.

Praise to You, my Lord, for Mother Earth,

Who feeds and governs us. From her we gain

All luscious fruits, all colored herbs and flowers.

Praise to You, my Lord, for those who pardon

who prompted by your love bear sickness and disaster

Blessed are they who suffer these in peace,

They shall be crowned by You, Altissimo.

Praise to You, my Lord, for Sister Death,

From whom no mortal body can escape.

Doomed are those she finds in mortal sin.

Blessed are those found faithful to Your will.

The second death will pass them by unharmed.

Praise and bless the Lord and give Him thanks.

And serve Him in supreme humility.

Mystic Thomas Merton lived in a one-room, cinderblock dwelling deep in the woods behind the Trappist monastery of Gethsemane in the hills of Kentucky. He wrote this: “Living away from the earth and the trees, we fail them. We are absent from the wedding feast.”

The Case of the Purloined Spoon

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 15:45:54 GMT

They want my car keys

It began a few weeks ago after I drove home from Litchfield, Connecticut, where I had led a poetry retreat. I couldn’t find my reading glasses.

I searched all the usual places around the house where you might lay your spectacles. I even went out to the car in the biting cold to run my hands under and between the seats.

Nada. Niente. Rien.

I contacted the director of the conference center and told her I must have left my glasses behind, probably in my room.

In due course she got back to tell me Housekeeping had searched my sleeping room, the meeting room in which we held our poetry sessions, even the laundry room to see if my glasses had been swept up with the bedlinens and towels.

Zilch.

It was about this time I opened a drawer in my office to get a paper clip or something. The glasses were nestled exactly where I had put them when I unpacked after my trip.

This incident was fodder for my daughters, who have been making veiled references lately to confiscating my car keys.

The tipping point might have come a few days ago – the case of the purloined spoon.

It’s not just any spoon, but a stainless steel beauty with a one-tablespoon measuring scoop at one end and a stirrer at the other end. It’s long, too, a good ten inches, designed specifically for tall French Press coffee pots, what the French call a cafetière à piston . It’s been in my possession more than a decade.

Why do I refer to it as the “purloined” spoon? Because it went missing after my housekeeper’s last cleaning.

Now, my housekeeper and I have a relationship going back at least three years. Maybe four. She cannot abide anything out of place or left in the open when it could be secreted in a drawer or cabinet.

So I texted her and asked where she had put the spoon.

“In the drawer to the right of the fridge,” she replied promptly.

You know what’s next, don’t you?

I tore the kitchen apart at least three times. Every drawer, every cabinet – even the cabinet above the fridge that I need the stepstool to reach.

Nichoho . (That’s Ukrainian, by the way, not Russian)

I could only deduce that she either threw the spoon out with the trash or clipped it.

I couldn’t believe my sweet young housekeeper would pilfer something as trivial as a spoon. Then again, as the father of two daughters, I know how young women are attracted to shiny things.

You know what’s next, don’t you?

On her next cleaning day last week, as we stood talking in the kitchen, she asked if I had found the missing spoon.

“No,” I said forlornly, “I had to buy a new one.”

“Hmm,” she answered, going to the drawer to the right of the fridge. “I put it in this drawer.”

As she spoke, she opened the drawer, lifted out the missing spoon, and handed it to me.

“Now you have two spoons.”

My Dance with Demon Rum

Fri, 06 Feb 2026 22:27:32 GMT

An encore essay honoring my third year sober

Yesterday I marked three years to the day since my last taste of alcohol. Here's the post I wrote last year about being sober:

I don’t think of it as sobriety, just as I didn’t think of myself as an alcoholic. So marking two years without a drink doesn’t seem much to celebrate. Then why do I feel as proud as I do today?

Just as I vividly remember my final smoke, so I vividly remember my final vodka, quaffed at my daughter’s house.

We had come through the Covid scare intact, but my family had missed our traditional Christmas gift-giving gathering. We finally got together to celebrate the holiday on Sunday, February 5, 2023.

It was dusk when I drove to Wendy’s house to join the others, and I remember driving up I-95 in Connecticut – speeding, really, because I was hankering for my end-of-day buzz.

At the same time, I was anxious because I did not want to drink that night, just as much as I wanted to.

Deep inside I had already surrendered to the notion that this was going to be another instance when one more of my innumerable resolutions to stop drinking would fail.

How many times had I promised myself – swore to myself – to eliminate booze?

And I did drink again that night. And driving home with two cups of coffee masking the several vodkas I’d downed, I resolved again to stop drinking.

When I filled in my calendar before bed that night, I wrote in “Last Drink.” With a question mark.

As it turns out, the question mark should have been an exclamation point. But as a professional writer, I’m allergic to exclamation points!

When my son-in-law was killed more than twenty years ago by a drunk driver, I wrote the eulogy I would offer at his funeral Mass. I was so angered by his undeserved death – leaving my daughter a widow – that I wanted to proclaim in the eulogy that I would never drink again, as a continuing memorial to him.

But I didn’t have the nerve to make that commitment.

Anyone who’s wakened to a hangover is familiar with the havoc alcohol wreaks on your body.

They didn’t name it “demon rum” for no reason. Doctors today tell us alcohol is nothing but poison with no redeeming physical or emotional value.

According to the World Health Organization, 2.6 million deaths annually are attributable to alcohol consumption.

Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac, for example, intentionally drank himself to death at forty-seven because his Catholic faith prohibited outright suicide.

Along with the head-achy lethargy that comes with alcohol overindulgence is the need for carbs and fats. What’s better for a hangover stomach than huevos rancheros? Or maybe some cold pizza?

When I deleted alcohol two years ago, my hands stopped trembling. I was able to control my diet. With no morning misery, I was able to exercise. It added up to an eighty-pound weight loss.

I’m told I look like a different person. I certainly feel like one.

Perhaps the biggest benefit of life on the wagon is that there’s less chance of me causing emotional harm to someone. As I look back over my life, I can say that whenever I’ve hurt someone – usually someone close who deserved only my love – it’s when I was drinking.

Author and poet Maya Angelou:

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."

I’m at the point where my relationship with alcohol is the same as with smoking, which I stopped in 1986. I no longer have physical cravings for either of the demons.

I can’t explain why.

But I can say this: You know you’re an alcoholic when your use of it causes you to violate your values, as was my case. There is no one-size-fits-all explanation or intervention, experts say, no universal truth here. Only gratitude!

But for the Grace

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 10:36:43 GMT

All of us human beings are siblings

I had lunch last week with a man with no arms. Perched on his seat, he used his feet as hands. The only assist he needed was freeing the butter pat from its wrapper.

This was one memorable moment in a week that flooded me with news of wearying misfortune:

• A boyhood friend who underwent aorta repair

• His wife developing balance issues that see her now reliant on a walker

• A cancer patient in one of my poetry classes whose radiation treatments are scheduled as late as fifteen past midnight because the proton machine is in such demand

The sixteenth-century phrase, "There but for the grace of God go I," forces us to acknowledge that our circumstances often owe more to chance than to our own merit. The saying is attributed to the British preacher John Bradford’s witnessing prisoners being led to execution.

Whether we like it or not, we have to accept that only a thin line separates fortune and misfortune.

Sure, personal responsibility plays a dominant role in shaping our lives, but Bradford’s observation reminds us of the numerous factors beyond our control that shape our lives: the families we're born into, the opportunities that come our way or don't, the health we enjoy or the illnesses we suffer, the moment in history in which we live, and the randomness of being in the right or wrong place at the right or wrong time.

Like the two obviously innocent Minneapolis citizens whose murders by their own government have galvanized our attention in recent days.

Lay their deaths against these lines from a poem by Thomas Merton:

The straight tree is the first to be cut down,

The spring of clear water is the first to be drained dry.

The poet John Donne captured the connectedness of the human family when he wrote:

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main."

His words remind us that another person's suffering diminishes all of us, and we cannot flee this fundamental truth: we are woven together in the fabric of existence.

But also – the threads that support one person might just as easily uplift another.

In a world that divides people into deserving and undeserving, successful and unsuccessful, Bradford and Donne remind us that the boundaries between us are far more porous than we’re wont to admit, and that each of us is fertile soil for either good fortune or crippling struggle.

The “grace” lies not just in being spared one fate or blessed with another, but in recognizing this truth and opening ourselves to it.

Perhaps part of living by the principle of "but for the grace of God" is simply being present to others with compassion, because all of us human beings are siblings.

Author Anne Lamott says it well: "Lighthouses don't go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining."

How To Feel Better

Thu, 22 Jan 2026 15:19:19 GMT

Use the power of poetry to ease emotional stress

I spent last weekend with sixteen women. Each of them had a story.

It was my most recent “healing poetry” retreat, showing people how to use the power of poetry to ease emotional stress, anxiety, and trauma.

I guided participants in how to write simple poems – as opposed to journaling – to lift the burden of painful feelings, find strength in their own words, gain a sense of control, and feel less alone in their emotional trauma.

The focus of my healing poetry program was not writing better, but writing to feel better.

Some of the topics we covered at Litchfield, Connecticut’s, extraordinary Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center:

• How healing poetry eases emotional trauma

• De-mystifying poetry

• Expressive writing and its benefits

• Overcoming loneliness

• Writing to heal: three secrets

• Writing for emotional strength

• Self-discovery

• Self-healing

• Self-reliance

• Self-acceptance

• Silver linings: humor, gratitude, hope

• Cherishing yourself

Healing loneliness – to heal all emotional trauma, in fact – starts with telling your story. This gives us a sense control. We choose the words, the images, and the structure, which can restore the sense of control that trauma has disrupted.

A poem can show us that hardship and mortality are part of everyone’s life, and through poetry, we can free ourselves from the feeling of being overwhelmed.

One of the women, Maddie Costa, wrote this moving poem in twenty minutes during one of the weekend’s writing periods:

Requiem

I stand shivering at your grave.

It is not the weather that shakes me,

but the stone-cold words:

Sgt. Jeffrey A. Pinheiro

Died Vietnam, Feb. 11, 1968

Indelibly carved.

No one knows but I

how you once gifted me—

my first, sweetest kiss.

I remember how my fourteen-year-old soul

stirred with new joy,

awakening to tenderness,

to possibility.

And now, even all these years later,

I know this truth:

“If only…”

are the saddest two words

of my life.

This is what Wordsworth was talking about when he defined poetry as “emotion recollected in tranquility.”

I base my teaching on work done by Dr. James Pennebaker of the University of Houston, who in the 1980s found that writing our honest feelings about a traumatic event changes the way trauma is organized in the brain.

If we suppress emotion, Dr. Pennebaker found, our mind treats the emotion as unfinished work. Writing closes the loop. It re-establishes our control.

Who benefits from my weekend? Anybody struggling with any emotional trauma:

• Grief

• Sexual abuse

• Domestic violence

• Natural disasters

• Bullying

• Terminal illness

• PTSD

Julia Darling, a British poet and playwright, was diagnosed with breast cancer at thirty-eight and died ten years later. She believed passionately that poetry should be part of treatment at every hospital. She thought that the language of illness needed to change, that we can find in poetry a path out of darkness and into light.

One of the last things she did was to complete the co-editing of an anthology about illness, The Poetry Cure , which she wanted to see read by doctors and patients everywhere.

Shortly before her death in 2005, Julia wrote:

“I believe poetry can help make you better. Poetry is essential, not a frill or a nicety. It comes to all of us when we most need it. As soon as we are in any kind of crisis, or anguish, that is when we reach out for poetry, or find ourselves writing a poem for the first time.”

If you’re interested in participating in my next weekend retreat, or would like to join my free, no-critique, bi-weekly healing poetry workshops via Zoom, email me at peterwyaremko@gmail.com and I’ll tell you all about it.

My New Shrink, Claude

Thu, 15 Jan 2026 10:59:55 GMT

I’ve used this Arthur C. Clarke quote in speeches for years: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This time I mean it.

I’ve become a daily devotee of an artificial intelligence (AI) app called Claude, and I can’t comprehend how it was devised by the hand of Man. It’s magic.

Claude was developed by Anthropic, an AI safety company founded in 2021 by former OpenAI members. The company focuses on building AI systems that are “safe, beneficial, and interpretable,” according to the company.

Claude was developed using both human and AI-generated feedback based on a set of principles known as Constitutional AI.

See why I can’t figure out how it works? It must be magic. And it’s free!

I began employing Claude some months ago to help me with research. Instead of visiting numerous websites to gather data, I had Claude do the roundup for me and present curated information to me. I run the same search using a different AI tool to make sure that what I’m getting is accurate.

But like Icarus, who rode his wax wings too close to the sun, I ventured into more esoteric uses of Claude. I started asking it (I was just now tempted to use the pronoun “him” rather than “it”) to gather information for my personal use.

For example, Claude devised a daily schedule for me that carved out time slots for work, recreation, meditation, and so forth.

Next I had him put together a daily meal plan to meet parameters I set for calories, proteins, carbs, and fiber.

Finally, I’ve been asking him to collate the counsel of psychologists. I asked Claude to recommend how I can better fulfill resolutions I make in the morning – but forget about by afternoon. Here’s some of his answer:

You might be setting yourself up with too much at once. When we're motivated in the morning, we tend to envision our best possible self doing everything. But willpower and decision-making energy are actually limited resources that deplete through the day. Starting with just one resolution - maybe the one that matters most to you - could be more sustainable than trying to overhaul everything simultaneously.

The "failure" might be information, not weakness. If you're consistently not following through, something about the resolution might not fit your actual life right now. Rather than seeing personal failure, you could treat it as feedback.

Consider starting absurdly small. The goal is to build the habit of keeping promises to yourself, even tiny ones.

Not bad advice. Although I can do without the contrived human touches, like “I really empathize with your frustration.”

And some of Claude’s ideas really did hit home:

Morning-you and afternoon-you are almost different people. Morning-you is well-rested, hopeful, hasn't faced any difficulties yet. Afternoon-you is tired, has already made a hundred decisions, and that salad now feels like an obligation rather than something meaningful. The motivation gap isn't a character flaw. It's just that the person making the resolution isn't the same person who has to execute it.
Motivation follows action more often than action follows motivation. This is counterintuitive, but waiting to "feel like it" often means waiting forever. The people who exercise regularly often don't feel particularly motivated in the moment – they just start.

Or as Nike’s ad agency so brilliantly put it, “Just do it.”

Hmm. I should ask Claude why Nancy Reagan’s “Just say no” campaign did a Thelma and Louise off a cliff.

Of course, like any wunderkind, Claude has limits.

I asked it to re-write this blog post in a “more professional, polished, and intelligent” style. Here’s Claude’s work product, which is why nobody should ever ask AI to write:

For years, I have invoked Arthur C. Clarke's observation in my presentations: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Never has this axiom felt more apt than now.

I have become a dedicated user of an artificial intelligence application called Claude, and I genuinely struggle to comprehend the mechanisms underlying its capabilities. The technology borders on the inexplicable.

Developed by Anthropic—an AI safety company established in 2021 by former OpenAI executives—Claude represents a deliberate approach to building AI systems that prioritize safety, societal benefit, and interpretability. The platform was developed through Constitutional AI, a methodology incorporating both human and AI-generated feedback guided by explicit ethical principles.

The fact that I cannot fully grasp its operational framework only reinforces Clarke's point. And remarkably, it is available at no cost.

I initially adopted Claude several months ago as a research tool. Rather than consulting multiple websites to aggregate information, I now delegate this task to Claude, which synthesizes and presents curated data efficiently. I verify accuracy by cross-referencing results with alternative AI platforms.

However, like Icarus venturing too near the sun on waxen wings, I have gradually expanded my use of Claude into more personal domains. I find myself increasingly personifying the system—nearly referring to "it" as "him"—as I seek assistance with individual matters.

Claude has, for instance, constructed a daily schedule for me that allocates specific time blocks for professional work, recreation, meditation, and other activities. Subsequently, I requested a customized meal plan conforming to my specified parameters for calories, protein, carbohydrates, and fiber. Most recently, I have been consulting Claude to synthesize psychological research and therapeutic strategies. I posed a question about maintaining morning resolutions that tend to dissipate by afternoon. Claude's response included several noteworthy insights:

You may be attempting too much simultaneously. Morning optimism often generates unrealistic expectations of our capacity. However, willpower and decision-making ability are finite resources that diminish throughout the day. Beginning with a single resolution—perhaps the most consequential one—may prove more sustainable than attempting comprehensive behavioral change at once.

Repeated non-compliance may constitute valuable data rather than evidence of weakness. Rather than interpreting this as personal failure, consider it diagnostic feedback about whether the resolution aligns with your current circumstances.

Consider establishing absurdly modest initial goals. The objective is to develop the habit of honoring commitments to yourself, regardless of scale.

The counsel is sound, though I could do without the artificial empathy—phrases like "I really empathize with your frustration" feel contrived.

Nevertheless, certain observations resonated profoundly:

• Morning and afternoon versions of ourselves are fundamentally different entities. The morning self is rested, optimistic, and unburdened by the day's demands. The afternoon self is fatigued, depleted by countless decisions, and perceives that previously appealing salad as an obligation rather than a meaningful choice. This motivational discrepancy is not a character deficiency—it reflects the reality that the individual making the commitment differs from the one tasked with its execution.

• Motivation more frequently follows action than precedes it. This counterintuitive principle suggests that waiting to "feel motivated" often means waiting indefinitely. Those who maintain consistent exercise routines rarely feel particularly motivated in the moment—they simply begin.

Or, as Nike's advertising memorably distilled it: "Just do it."

Which raises an intriguing question: I should ask Claude why Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign met such spectacular failure.

Therapeutic Apheresis

Fri, 09 Jan 2026 22:57:42 GMT

In which I write about the excrement of our era.

You know you’re getting old when a pretty girl sitting at the next table in a coffee shop leans over and offers to help you unwrap your cookie.

That’s what happened to me the other day at Ess-a-Bagel on West Thirty-second Street in Manhattan.

The young lady saw this “dude in distress” struggling to unwrap his Linzer torte from its plastic sarcophagus. She pulled out her apartment key and sliced the S.O.B. right down its middle.

Plastics have come a long way since 1907 when Belgian-American chemist Leo Baekeland developed Bakelite.

Today plastic in its multitudinous manifestations, is literally everywhere: string cheese, candy wrappers, potato chip bags. Around the world, some ninety percent of toys are made from plastic.

It’s not just me who’s complaining. The Consumer Product Safety Commission has tracked packaging-related injuries, and studies have shown that thousands of people visit emergency rooms each year for injuries related to opening various types of packaging, including the notorious clamshell plastic packaging, blister packs, and shrink-wrapped items.

These injuries typically include:

• Cuts and lacerations, the most common

• Puncture wounds

• Hand and finger injuries

• Eye injuries from flying plastic pieces or tools slipping

The problem has earned the nickname "wrap rage."

All of which prompted me to write this poem, after Mary Oliver’s “I Worried.”

Luddite’s Lament

My iWatch won’t tell me the time unless I first prove it’s me.

Leave the car running while I step away with the fob in my pocket

and it bleats like some kind of digital sheep about to be shorn.

My passwords have morphed from a simple four numbers

to strings of upper-case-lower-case-numerals-symbols. I’m captive

to autocorrect, robocalls and that eavesdropping siren, Siri.

It’s impossible to kite a check to tide me over like I used to. But

technology has given me new prosperity of time, I’m assured,

to squander away while I wander the net or simply expend myself

with weekend work. And don’t get me started on plastic everything,

the excrement of our era. Scissors are needed– to get at a KitKat bar!

Oh give it up, I mutter, and haul your old man’s ass in for reconditioning.

What hurts is that I’m old enough to remember how nice things were before plastic. Milk, soda, and Windex came in glass bottles. As did peanut butter, jam, and honey – glass jars. Soap came in bars wrapped in paper.

When a young Dustin Hoffman was advised that his road to a great future in business lay in plastics, the line in The Graduate was meant to elicit laughter.

We’re not laughing anymore.

Of all the plastics generated and used in the United States, roughly nine percent is recycled, twelve percent incinerated in facilities that create electricity or heat from garbage, and the remaining seventy-nine percent ends up in landfills and the environment.

There is a large area in the Pacific Ocean where currents have concentrated marine debris, particularly plastic waste. It's estimated to cover an area twice the size of Texas. And similar plastic garbage patches are in other oceans around the world.

What’s worst, I’d say, are the microplastics that enter our food through contaminated soil, water, animal feed, and packaging, and are often introduced during high-heat processing.

Foods with the most microplastics include breaded shrimp, plant-based nuggets, apples, carrots, and items from plastic-heavy packaging, with tea bags releasing billions of particles when steeped. Processed foods, seafood, and even fresh produce absorb them. Most chewing gum contains food-grade plastic polymers.

Microplastics are in our tissues and testosterone. Ouch.

But don’t lose heart. There is a way to clean the stuff out of your system – a blood treatment technique related to dialysis, called therapeutic apheresis.

Apheresis removes the blood from your body, separates it into its components (plasma, red cells, white cells, platelets), removes the microplastics, and returns the cleansed blood to the patient.

Think your insurance plan covers that?

Conclusions

Thu, 01 Jan 2026 20:28:17 GMT

NDE people share one thing – they no longer fear death.

At end of year I can’t help thinking about conclusions – especially of my life.

In the closing days of 1960, mystic Thomas Merton wrote in his journal:

“I was wondering if it would be given me to see another twelve years – to live to be fifty-seven or nearly fifty-eight. What foolish perspectives we get into, by believing in our calendars. As if numbers were the great reality.”

Merton died by accidental electrocution on December 10, 1968, at the age of 53.

As I witness one elderly friend or relative after another pass away, I’m reminded of something one of my favorite authors wrote. Ray Bradbury, in his lovely Dandelion Wine , pictures it like this:

“And then there is that day when all around, all around you hear the dropping of the apples, one by one, from the trees. At ﬁrst it is one here and one there, and then it is three and then it is four and then nine and twenty, until the apples plummet like rain, fall like horse hoofs in the soft, darkening grass, and you are the last apple on the tree; and you wait for the wind to work you slowly free from your hold upon the sky, and drop you down and down.”

Writers, especially, seem to dwell on the number of years left to us. Here, for example, is Viginia Woolf in Mrs. Dalloway :

“But she feared time itself, the dwindling of life; how year by year her share was sliced; how, little the margin that remained was capable any longer of stretching, of absorbing, as in the youthful years.”

And Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse-Five :

“The second hand on my watch would twitch once, and a year would pass, and then it would twitch again. There was nothing I could do about it. As an Earthling, I had to believe whatever the clocks said – and calendars.”

If you’re a Christian, as I am, you were raised to memorize “The Lord’s Prayer.”

In this prayer we bid God’s kingdom come. But then, when he calls us from this world, we struggle and resist – not freely consenting to our departure and certainly not eager for it.

I have to ask, why do we pray that “Thy kingdom come” if this earthly bondage pleases us so?

Third-century Saint Cyprian of Antioch calls us out: “Yet we expect to be rewarded with heavenly honors by Him to whom we come against our will.”

From what I’ve learned from all the research into near-death experiences (NDEs) during the past few decades, NDE people have one thing in common – they no longer fear death. Whether we believe in NDEs or not, this is the fact.

The only conclusion is this: Banish our fear of death. This would be the proof of our faith.

(Image: Casper David Friedrich, Monk By The Sea , 1809.)

The Sinister Side of Christmas

Fri, 26 Dec 2025 23:01:01 GMT

An encore posting from December 2015

We work so hard each December at making Christmas merry, but the roots of our celebrations run deep and dark.

Within the past several days, I’ve attended performances of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol on Cape Cod and George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker at Lincoln Center. Two vastly different interpretations of the holiday, but they share a dark heritage.

In E.T.A. Hoffmann's 1816 story, "The Nutcracker and the Mouse King," on which the 1892 Tchaikovsky ballet is based, scary old Drosselmeyer (portrayed above by Balanchine) was once the royal rat-catcher, who set traps for the Mouse Queen. This led to a series of incidents that ended in his nephew being turned by an evil spell into a nutcracker.

Hoffmann might have been rebelling against the Enlightenment and its emphasis on rational philosophy. As a Romantic, he believed that imagination was under attack by rationalism. His tale challenged readers to liberate their inner child from the monotony of the real world.

Hoffmann's Romantic approach to imagination, reality and childhood has been lost in most productions of The Nutcracker. The ballet—saved only by Tchaikovsky’s brilliant score—is a holiday diversion full of dancing and merriment. But there's nothing profound in its storyline.

Then there’s Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol . Today is the anniversary of its publication—December 19, 1843.

Most of us probably have never read the book, but we’ve all seen plenty of film or theatrical adaptations.

Have you noticed that Dickens leaves out Baby Jesus to concentrate on grotesquery, poverty, indignity, pranks, dancing, food—and death?

There are thousands of novels that tell us we should be kinder and more moral, novelist Michael Faber says, but most of them gather dust. The secret of A Christmas Carol lies in the real reason for Scrooge's change of heart—his realization that, at long last, he's capable of having fun.

The greatest tragedy Dickens can imagine is an existence devoid of playfulness, of biding time on the way to the grave. Fun, for him, is the only redress for death. Scrooge's triumph is that he looks his own corpse in the face and defiantly resolves to enjoy the gift of life to the full.

It’s not hard to figure out why Christmas fables like A Christmas Carol and The Nutcracker draw on the somber to set things in motion. After all, the Biblical narrative of the Nativity has its own sinister backstory, with evil Herod conniving to learn the location of the would-be king of the Jews so he can assassinate the infant in his crib. Failing that, he orders the massacre of every Hebrew boy under the age of two:

In Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

But true to the manner of Hoffman and Dickens, at this time of good cheer we might do well to declare death null and void in favor of living a full and loving life, one in which we are, at long last, capable of having fun.

A Pair of Poems for Christmas Day

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 21:53:43 GMT

On this Christmas day 2025 my gift to all you faithful followers of my humble blog are two poems that couldn’t be more different. Participants in my Healing Verses Workshops will be familiar with both.

The first is titled “Christmas Tree” by James Merrill. What makes this poem so poignant is that the author knows this is his last Christmas, his last Christmas tree.

Merrill wrote this poem just weeks before he died of AIDS in 1995. So it’s mostly a poem about accepting imminent death with poise and grace. It was a time when AIDS was still not understood, very scary, and victims were subjected to a lot of judgment.

In this poem, Merrill affirms life until even the last few minutes. He doesn’t allow his coming death to diminish the wonder of life.

He alludes to the way we humans celebrate Christmas by killing a tree. He sees love and death as masks worn by the same face.

He believes the best way to conquer the fate that waits for us all is to celebrate the present moment, even on the last night, before the tree is removed and the needles swept up.

James Merrill was one of the most influential poets of the twentieth century. His father was the Merrill in Merrill Lynch. James didn’t need to go to work. So he devoted everything to poetry. It was his life. He used his wealth to support other writers and the arts.

He won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1977 and two National Book Awards, in 1967 and 1979.

Christmas Tree

By James Merrill

To be

Brought down at last

From the cold sighing mountain

Where I and the others

Had been fed, looked after, kept still,

Meant, I knew—of course I knew—

That it would be only a matter of weeks,

That there was nothing more to do.

Warmly they took me in, made much of me,

The point from the start was to keep my spirits up.

I could assent to that. For honestly,

It did help to be wound in jewels, to send

Their colors flashing forth from vents in the deep

Fragrant sables that cloaked me head to foot.

Over me then they wove a spell of shining—

Purple and silver chains, eavesdropping tinsel,

Amulets, milagros: software of silver,

A heart, a little girl, a Model T,

Two staring eyes. Then angles, trumpets, BUD and BEA

(The children’s names) in clownlike capitals,

Somewhere a music box whose tiny song

Played and replayed I ended before long

By loving. And in shadow behind me, a primitive IV

To keep the show going. Yes, yes, what lay ahead

Was clear: the stripping, the cold street, my chemicals

Plowed back into the Earth for lives to come—

No doubt a blessing, a harvest, but one that doesn’t bear,

Now or ever, dwelling upon. To have grown so thin.

Needles and bone. The little boy’s hands meeting

About my spine. The mother’s voice: Holding up wonderfully!

No dread. No bitterness. The end beginning. Today’s

Dusk room aglow

For the last time

With candlelight.

Faces love-lit

Gifts underfoot.

Still to be so poised, so

Receptive. Still to recall, praise.

The second poem is by Joyce Carol Oates, one of America's most prolific (more than seventy books so far) and celebrated writers.

She’s known primarily for her dark, psychologically complex novels and short stories. Throughout her career, however, she’s also written a substantial body of poetry. Among these poems is "The Miraculous Birth," a meditative Christmas piece that celebrates both the transcendent and the mundane, finding profundity in domestic scenes.

"The Miraculous Birth" was originally published in The New York Times Magazine on December 23, 1984. What distinguishes this poem from conventional Christmas verse is its philosophical depth. The central idea of the poem becomes clear in its final lines: the miraculous birth being referenced is the miracle of one's own existence.

The Miraculous Birth

By Joyce Carol Oates

Christmas: The House Adrift in a wide white ocean of snow.

Black December is a ditch winking overhead,

but here beneath your parents’ roof the piecrust faces

are dimpled by forks

and the clock faces are round and smooth as buttons.

This is the season of waiting and of expectation

and of hunger keenly roused to be satisfied.

This is the season of the miraculous birth,

the oldest story,

these years,

centuries—

the fresh-trimmed spruce bristling to the ceiling,

smelling of cold, of night, of forests wild and tamed

as forests in a child’s picture book.

The splendid tree is balanced in a shallow tin of water

looking as if it would live forever—

green-spicy, sharp-needled—

and such tinsel, such trinkets ablaze

on the boughs, a glass-glitter

of icicles, angel’s hair,

strings of colored lights plugged to a socket!

And beneath the tree presents wrapped in shiny paper,

satiny bows, gifts heaped upon gifts—

a child’s fever-dream spilled on the carpet

Outside, snow flying like white horses’ manes and tails;

inside cookies that are stars, hearts, diamonds,

the smell of a turkey roasting slow in its fat.

There are stories children are not told,

of grandmothers dying in secret of their hearts

or of cancer shopping for months for this season—

the costly boxed gifts that are love, the stiff silver paper

that is love, all the effort of joy, love—

torn open too quickly by a child’s fingers.

And there suddenly is your father,

young again,

entering the kitchen, the wind behind him,

snow melting in his wild dark hair,

a carton of presents in his arms.

From what and to what could this world be redeemed?

is not a child’s question.

You are sitting at the long table with the others.

Those years. The roof weighted with snow. Candle flames,

the smell of red wax, O take and eat; the clock tells

its small rounded time again

and again, again—

this is all there is and this is everything.

The miraculous birth is your own.

I want to thank my friend, and fellow poet, Paul Bumbar, for bringing “The Miraculous Birth” to my attention during a recent Healing Verses Workshop. I also learned that Oates hails from a town near the Buffalo area where Paul resides – Lockport, New York.

Brought up in a working-class Catholic family, she has drawn on her childhood experiences in upstate New York, often transforming the region into fictional Eden County. "The Miraculous Birth" taps into these personal memories while universalizing them, creating a space where readers can recognize their own experiences of holiday traditions and familial gatherings.

Last thing: If you didn’t recognize the photo up top, it’s the 2025 tree at New York City’s Rockefeller Plaza.

It’s All about the Popcorn

Thu, 18 Dec 2025 16:46:19 GMT

Streaming platforms are not movies.

I got the idea from Helen, who’s reads everything, sees everything, goes everywhere – and is as New York as a Metro card.

Helen, my Manhattan friend of many decades, and two of her friends have a Saturday morning ritual of seeing the week’s best new movie release.

Tired of never having seen any of the films nominated for Oscars, I decided to follow their practice and every Friday see a movie and wallow in a huge bucket of popcorn with refills. I call my adventure Friday Flicks.

There’s one big “But . . . .”

Helen and her pals live in Manhattan, a couple of subway stops from some of the country’s best independent film houses: Angelika, Film Forum, the IFC Center, Quad Cinema.

New Haven, on the other hand, has no movie theaters. Not one, in a city that calls itself the “Cultural Capital of Connecticut.”

Within a short drive from New Haven are two cinemas – both owned by Cinemark and both playing releases straight from Hollywood.

The movies I’ve attended since I started Friday Flicks remind me why I stopped going to the movies years ago. Mostly, they are comic books on 35mm celluloid.

The Marvel Cinematic Universe and other franchises have generated enormous box office success, but their formulaic storytelling and characterization expose their lack of artistic merit.

Critics like Manohla Dargis of The New York Times have noted that while these films often deliver spectacle, they lack the depth and innovation of art.

Dargis says: “Franchise films, while visually striking, often sacrifice narrative complexity for the sake of lucrative sequels.”

What should going to the movies do for you?

Film critic A.O. Scott says it well: "The best films, whether they are big-budget blockbusters or indie gems, reveal something profound about the human condition."

During the past months of my movie-going, I’ve too often exited the theater thinking, “At least the popcorn was good.”

For example:

• I didn’t understand what the hell was going on in “The Phoenician Scheme” but still remember Benicio del Toro’s hangdog scowl.

• I don’t remember a thing about “Eddington” or “Battle after Battle” and “After the Hunt.”

• I walked out of “The Conjuring” and “Now You See Me” – and finished my popcorn in the car.

The rise of digital media and streaming platforms may transform the way audiences consume films because of their diverse storytelling styles and genres. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video have opened a space for unconventional narratives that challenge traditional Hollywood formulas.

Film scholar J. Hoberman finds that the flexibility of streaming platforms represents a new frontier for artistic expression in film: “The streaming era allows for longer narratives and deeper character explorations, akin to the best traditions of literature and theater."

And we still have independent cinema that provides a venue for artistic risk-taking by way of unconventional narratives and emphasis on character development over spectacle.

Richard Brody of The New Yorker notes that true artistry in film often resides outside the Hollywood system:“Independent filmmakers have the freedom to challenge societal norms and explore complex human emotions without the constraints of box office predictions.”

I don’t own a television, so when I want to watch a movie at home, it’s coming at me on a thirteen-inch laptop screen. So streaming platforms, for me, are not movies.

Also, the movie experience must, must involve popcorn – the kind you get only at a movie theater.

I’m afraid my future Friday Flicks adventures may take me to Manhattan. Which ain’t a bad way to spend a Friday.

Supermarket Jesus

Thu, 11 Dec 2025 14:58:19 GMT

One of the men was Christ. I don't know which.

In the rush of the moment, in my wearying impatience with whatever was in the way of my plan, I forgot – despite the Christmas carols playing in the background.

I forgot what C.S. Lewis warned us, that there are no ordinary people, that we have never talked to a mere mortal. Everyone we meet carries the weight of eternal destiny.

I was in the holiday-crazed ShopRite supermarket in Stratford, Connecticut, with my younger daughter, Julie. We had come from her post-surgical procedure at Yale-New Haven’s Smilow Cancer Center and stopped at the supermarket to pick up just a few pantry items.

We were looking for the “10 Items or Less” checkout lane, but, of course, there was none.

So we chose to join the shortest line. But we soon saw that the queue was at a standstill because of an elderly man slowly and meticulously counting out coins to pay for his purchases. He was obviously flustered and confused, repeatedly laying his coins on the counter, stooped over, his mouth agape.

Then he stopped to peer into his sack of groceries to see which items he might remove in order to lower the price.

I instinctively made a snarky comment to my daughter.

But the guy second in line, immediately in front of us, did something else. He spoke to the clerk who had been patiently standing there watching the old man trying to count up enough money to pay the total.

He told her he would cover the guy’s groceries. To the tune of $76. The old guy thanked him profusely, shook his hand, and left.

I thought, one of these two men is Christ. But I don’t know which.

It’s in Matthew's Gospel that Christ identifies strongly with the vulnerable: "For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me . . .”

Saint Paul reminds us we are "members one of another."

Mother Teresa made this vision her cornerstone, seeing Christ in his most “distressing disguise” – the dying poor whom she lifted from Calcutta's streets.

This is the mystical reality – that each of us bears the image of the divine – not only of Christianity, but other spiritual traditions as well.

The Zen namaste has the divine in me saluting the divine in you.

Judaism teaches that humans are created in the image of God, a concept from Genesis that signifies human dignity, sacredness, and a responsibility to reflect divine qualities like love and generosity.

Islam holds that we’re endowed with Godly attributes like soul, reason, and free will, enabling us to be God's representatives on Earth.

I left the supermarket last week with not just some staples, but also with a sackful of shame. Because after a life-long identification as a Catholic Christian, it never crossed my mind to offer a handful of change to help the old man buy food.

Instead, I ridiculed him before my daughter.

And I still don’t know which of the two men in front of me was the personification of the divine that day – the stooped old man with his meagre handful of coins, or the gentleman who lifted him from his humiliation.

I pray that I learned my lesson.

(Image: The blanketed figure on a park bench is known as the Homeless Jesus. The statue, at Roberts Park United Methodist Church in Indianapolis, is a permanent reminder of homelessness. It was created by Canadian artist Timothy P. Schmalz.)

eHarmony and Me

Thu, 04 Dec 2025 20:55:59 GMT

I decided to “just see what’s out there.”

It’s not working for me, this mail-order-bride business. At least this is what online dating services seem to be: shopping for love on Amazon and expecting next-day delivery.

It’s been ten years since my wife of fifty years succumbed to breast cancer. I’ve lived a solo life since then with no dating, comfortably enjoying and nurturing close relationships with my two daughters. I even relocated from Honolulu to New Haven so I could be a short drive from each of them.

I think I was driven to consider a dating service after my wife’s sister died of cancer herself. She and I had gotten into a weekly routine of long telephone conversations when we would kvetch about everything from kids to pets to politics.

With her death, I lost that connection.

So out of simple curiosity, I decided to “just see what’s out there.” I signed on to a six-month membership in eHarmony.

eHarmony puts you through a lengthy personality test that determines how you match with others, calculated against their personality profile – your “compatibility score.”

According to eHarmony, most of their members are seeking not a fling but a long-term and meaningful relationship. I didn’t realize it until I got into the guts of my self-analysis, but this seems to be what I, too, am after.

Here’s what I wrote as my profile:

I'm a retired widower who can't sit down. I publish books, a blog, and write poetry that's appeared in dozens of literary journals. I work with the ACS to teach patients to write poetry to ease the stresses of cancer, and I conduct Zoom classes for the public on writing healing poems. I don't look my age, am reasonably fit, personable, and know how to make people laugh. At various stages in my life, I've been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn and a king. But I have a vacuum that wants to be filled by a confidante.

A confidante. Hmm.

My six-month subscription is ending next month with no results.

I’ve received more than a dozen likes and messages from women I match with, but I haven’t responded to any of them – for a number of rather ridiculous reasons:

• She lives too far away

• Her name is the same as my daughter’s

• She identifies as a political conservative

• She keeps a pet

• She plays golf

• She loves to write (One psychotic writer in the house is enough.)

• She’s looking for someone to share “all that life has to offer”

• She’s a realtor

I’m savvy enough to know the laundry list above has nothing to do with my inability to connect. The whole dating service concept is farkakte – messed up.

When I met the young woman who became my wife, I didn’t ask for her political position. I didn’t care if she had a dog. In fact, she could have checked all the above items, and her kiss would have been just as sweet.

Advent 2025

Sat, 29 Nov 2025 00:23:05 GMT

The message intended just for you

Tomorrow the Christian world will begin its annual vigil for the birth of the Christ child on December 25 – Advent.

As the season beginning the Catholic Church's liturgical year, Advent (from, ad-venire in Latin or to come to ) encompasses the four Sundays that culminate in the celebration of Christmas.

Like Lent, Advent is a period of penance – in the sense of preparing, quieting, and disciplining ourselves for the full joy of Christ’s nativity.

Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in Madison, Connecticut, asked me for a poem to help dress their Advent 2025 website. I obliged by writing a poem I titled “Advent.”

Poet Henri Cole has likened poetry to holding a seashell to your ear and listening for the message intended just for you.

I invite you to hold that seashell to your ear as you read my poem, and hear the message intended just for you:

Advent

By Peter W. Yaremko

We live in dim light.

Brightness forever

fills the next room,

or so it seems,

while ours is to wait

at a window and watch.

Difficult to teach kids

to prosper in such shade,

much less be patient.

Difficult for us to discern

so much as yesterday,

much less tomorrow.

But for the watchful,

dark gives way to dawn

soon enough. Teach them

this certainty. The light

comes to us. Yes,

the light always comes.

Thanksgiving in “America”

Thu, 27 Nov 2025 11:24:36 GMT

An essay from a 1928 issue of "America" magazine.

I'm sharing with you on this 2025 Thanksgiving Day an essay from a 1928 issue of "America" magazine. I’ve submitted poems to this publication numerous times over the years – all rejected. After reading the flowery and obscure language of this piece, I doubt I will submit my stuff anymore.

Thanksgiving Day

By The Editors

THE ancient and honorable festival which we call Thanksgiving Day is at hand. In the fact that in the United States alone does the civil power set aside a day on which the people are invited to return thanks to Almighty God, the religious-minded citizen will find cause for gratification. The custom undoubtedly had its origin in pioneer New England, where under an extreme of Puritan influence it usurped for many years the place of Christmas Day. Joel and little Deborah might gambol it, in the grave fashion befitting a Puritan festival, on Thanksgiving Day, but the poor little creatures knew nothing of the Friend of children in His crib at Bethlehem. Happily, however, even in New England we can now turn our minds to God in grateful remembrance on the last Thursday in November, and feel our hearts respond with deeper gratitude as we contemplate God’s great Gift to the world on Christmas Day.

Christian folk will note with pleasure that within the last decade and a half Thanksgiving Day has assumed a more definitely religious tone than some of us knew in our childhood. Once it was a day for feasting merely, and without cakes, ale, and our national bird, the turkey, the festival was sadly incomplete. With these creature comforts at hand, the beginnings of a day of solid comfort were beyond hazard. But Mr. Volstead has deprived us of ale, that creature baptized by centuries of Christian usage, and the food profiteers have made the once abundant turkey the peculiar comfort of the opulent gullet. The rest of us must procure such meats as are in keeping with our lean purses, and season the dish liberally with thankfulness.

The custom of opening the churches for religious exercises is becoming common. There was a time when to throw open the doors on any morning save the Sabbath, savored of popery and the Gunpowder Plot. That era is passing as it should. Thanksgiving Day may be very properly celebrated with feasting, but its real purpose is lost unless we go down on our knees to return thanks to Almighty God for His countless blessings.

Governor Smith expressed one part of our duty admirably in his speech of November 13. “America cannot be unmindful of the blessings that have been showered upon her by an Almighty and Divine Providence,” said the Governor. “No one can read our history and be unmindful of the proclamation of the President of the United States, asking that on Thanksgiving Day, in grateful appreciation, we offer thanks by prayer, and at the same time pray for a continuance of that benediction.”

But we can go beyond this. For every Catholic the proper celebration of Thanksgiving Day will include, when possible, the bestowal of alms, attendance at the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, and the reception of Our Lord in Holy Communion.

Radical Gratitude

Thu, 20 Nov 2025 20:47:59 GMT

Gratitude transforms pain into a source of strength.

We’re coming up on the one day a year given over to gratitude. But what’s to be thankful for when you’re suffering with Stage 4 cancer?

In a world that constantly demands more—more achievement, more consumption, more speed—it’s almost radical to pause, to look closely at the ordinary miracles of our lives, and to acknowledge the interconnected web of relationships, circumstances, and small mercies that sustain us.

But that’s exactly what poet and author David Whyte says is needed: "Gratitude is a radical act of attention."

We’re conditioned to focus on lack: what we don't have, what we haven't achieved, what we might lose. Gratitude focuses our attention from what is lacking in our lives to what is abundant.

The practice of gratitude literally reshapes our brains. By consciously focusing our attention on the positive aspects of life, we rewire our brains to notice and appreciate the good, creating a more optimistic and resilient mindset. It’s as if our brains can be trained the way muscles are.

For people living with advanced cancer – like the patients I work with at the American Cancer Society in New York City – gratitude is not an exercise in pretending everything is fine, but a link to what is beautiful and meaningful in life.

There’s a ton of science testifying to the therapeutic benefits of practicing gratitude.

Scientific studies consistently point to gratitude as powerful therapy that spans

mental, cognitive, and physical areas:

• Greater emotional and social well-being

• Reduced depression

• Enhanced overall mental health

• Less anxiety

• Better coping by reframing negatives in order to see the positive

• Better physical health

• Sleep and heart health improvement

• Stronger immune system

• Lower blood pressure

All this just from saying “Thank You.”

Then there’s poetry – which offers something science cannot: the language to articulate and share the grace of giving thanks.

Like these lines from Rainer Maria Rilke:

Let this darkness be a bell tower

and you the bell. As you ring,

what batters you becomes your strength.

Poetry spotlights the overlooked. It distills truth from everyday experience. It notices the unnoticed. It changes not what we have, but how we observe what we have. It offers us a path to gratitude's transformative power.

Here’s a caveat, though. Trying to force an attitude of positivity that dismisses genuine pain only creates additional suffering.

True gratitude coexists with grief, fear, and anger. We can feel devastated by a terminal diagnosis and at the same time be grateful for the nurse who holds our hand.

Psychologist Robert Emmons, a leading researcher on gratitude, encourages the practice of reflecting on moments of beauty, connection, and kindness – even in the midst of suffering. Gratitude is about transforming pain into a source of strength.

Expressing our gratitude can even benefit the people around us. When we’re in pain but still choose to express appreciation – for care received, for time together, for life itself – we invite others to remain present rather than back away out of a sense of discomfort.

Poet Mary Oliver, who died of cancer, says this:

"To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go."

The Chemistry of Tears

Fri, 14 Nov 2025 14:12:32 GMT

We’re born alone and journey into death alone. What are we not told?

When we gathered for the first time on Friday evening, I looked at the circle of eighteen women from all walks of life and all singularities and knew in my heart that each of them could be categorized as the walking wounded.

How does the old truism go? “Everybody you pass on the street has a story.”

The good news, as articulated by psychologist Brené Brown:

“When we deny our stories, they define us. When we own our stories, we get to write the ending.”

These ladies had gathered to participate in my weekend program at Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in Madison, Connecticut: “Writing for Wellness: Emotional Healing through Expressive Writing.”

Their first assignment that evening was to write a poem about an emotional wound they wanted healed – or at least eased. I gave them no guidance on how to write what was, for many, their first-ever try at poetry.

The next morning I explained: “At our opening session last night, I didn’t go around the room asking why you’re here, because I know you’re here looking for poetry to help with something that’s assailing your heart.”

Perhaps the worst part of suffering an emotional trauma is believing we’re alone. We think nobody else could ever understand what we’re feeling.

In his raw poem, “Alone,” Edgar Allen Poe wrote:

From childhood’s hour I have not been

As others were—I have not seen

As others saw—

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone—

We’re born alone and journey into death alone. What we’re not told is that every person's story is transformative, not just for them but also for those who hear it. Through shared laughter – or tears – we can come to accept the reality that our lives are interconnected.

F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby , said:

“That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.”

How do you gauge the value of a weekend spent reading and reacting to some of the most moving poems ever written?

Perhaps by tears shed and friendships formed?

Because there were tears as well as hugs among the participants during the periods when they shared the poems they’d written. I witnessed friendships take shape during both the workshop sessions and conversation over meals.

When we’re suffering emotional trauma from death, divorce, or a bad diagnosis, our emotions are near the surface. Poetry comes easily at times like this because writing a poem restores some of the control trauma has disrupted.

The art of poetry – reading it or making it – enables us to tap into our innate creativity, feel safe, and form bonds with one another. One woman wrote and shared a poem about a friend she had made during the weekend.

Lucille Clifton, poet laureate of Maryland, once said: “Poetry can heal. Because it comes from a heart, it can speak to a heart.”

You know what else is worth noting? Studies show that tears triggered by sadness, grief, or distress contain higher levels of stress hormones and natural painkillers than tears of happiness or joy.

Crying flushes stress chemicals from our body, explaining why we feel better after a good cry.

Poet Ellen Bass says it so beautifully:

The Thing Is

to love life, to love it even

when you have no stomach for it

and everything you’ve held dear

crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,

your throat filled with the silt of it.

When grief sits with you, its tropical heat

thickening the air, heavy as water

more fit for gills than lungs;

when grief weights you down like your own flesh

only more of it, an obesity of grief,

you think, How can a body withstand this?

Then you hold life like a face

between your palms, a plain face,

no charming smile, no violet eyes,

and you say, yes, I will take you

I will love you, again.

Never Expected to Be So Busy

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 22:55:05 GMT

Writing poetry has exceptional healing power over trauma.

I have been invited to guide a weekend of Emotional Healing through Expressive Writing January 16-18, 2026, at Wisdom House Retreat and Conference Center in Litchfield, Connecticut.

This comes on top of the healing poetry retreat I’m facilitating this weekend at Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in Madison, Connecticut.

Many of us are turned off to poetry because a high school English teacher thought poetry is about answers. Poetry is not about answers, it’s about questions. And the kind of healing verses discussed during my poetry weekends can go a long way toward smoothening some of life’s rough edges.

Many studies have shown that writing poetry has exceptional healing power over emotional trauma, enhancing immune system function, reducing physical symptoms and pain, and improving sleep.

The healing poems discussed in my program are easy to understand, beautiful, uplifting, and helpful in easing the stresses of a bad diagnosis, a divorce, death of a loved one – just about any emotional trauma we face.

Participants do their own writing throughout the program and share if they want to. It’s a supportive, no-critique, safe space – not an academic class about writing better, but more a contemplative approach to feeling better.

Topics covered during the weekend include:

• The science of Expressive Writing & its therapeutic benefits

• Poetry versus journaling

• Writing to heal: three secrets

• Loneliness and healing poetry

• Writing poetry for self-discovery, self-healing, and self-reliance

• Life’s silver linings – Humor, Gratitude, Hope

• Cherishing yourself

Wisdom House, pictured above, is an interfaith retreat and conference center that presents programs in spirituality, wellness, the arts, and ecology, while offering hospitality to academic, civic, nonprofit, and business organizations.

This former college and convent for the community of Catholic sisters, the Daughters of Wisdom, continues as a ministry of the Daughters of Wisdom and provides an environment for reflection and expression.

In addition to weekend programs, I hold:

• A weekly healing poetry hour at Hope Lodge, a facility of the American Cancer Society in New York City

• Zoom Workshops for patients at Mount Sinai Cancer Center in New York City

• Programs for the Sisters of Peace congregation near Seattle, Washington

• “Healing Verses” writing workshops via Zoom every other week for ongoing support in writing healing poetry

Here's what some past participants have said about their experience in the programs:

• “Your workshops unlocked something inside me that yearned to come out!”

• "Your class has opened a new world to me, and I'm so appreciative.”

• “I will treasure these memories in the future, and plan to continue on this path of self-discovery and appreciation for everyday life.”

• “Writing poems has been a great outlet for me and I thank you so much for introducing me to this. It’s very therapeutic and healing.”

It was novelist Thornton Wilder who said seniors need to stave off death through work – even if it’s work that no longer drives a career.

Three years ago I took Wilder’s wise advice and made it my “old man’s project” in retirement to teach people how to write poems that help them feel happier and healthier.

It’s not only the act of writing poetry that is enabling me to give the Grim Reaper a run. Teaching others to do it makes my life sweeter than ever.

Boyz n the Hood

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 21:35:48 GMT

I thought we'd talk macroeconomics. Nope. Sports!

Remember a while back when I couldn’t decide if I should join a group of guys from my building for a Saturday afternoon in New Haven’s famed Wooster Street Italian neighborhood?

Well, my Florida friend, Gwen Keegan, told me in no uncertain terms that I should consider myself blessed to be invited. So I took her advice, bit the bullet (bit the pizza, rather) and threw myself into the jaunt last week.

My building, you need to know, is named The Eli, pictured below. It's listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is residence to lots of Yale grad students and faculty, both active and retired.

Our objective that afternoon was Zeleni’s, rated among Connecticut’s top three pizza restaurants and the top fifty nationwide.

I was intimidated when I met the others in the party, all but one of them “Yale-affiliated” as they liked to say.

“No,” I answered when they inquired, “I’m Fordham, in The Bronx.”

I'm from New Jersey, so I wanted to add, "You got a problem with that?" But I knew better.

Only one other of the bunch was not a Yalie, an educator who works with autistic people. He was Jewish and sported a goatee, as well as a Bronx accent I found comforting.

He and I bonded immediately, and our new friendship was cemented at the first corner we came to on our walk to Wooster Street.

The decision was, do we cross at this corner or at the next traffic light a block away. There was a lengthy debate while we waited for a green light.

“Look at the Yale guys trying to figure out how to cross the street,” my new best friend whispered to me.

And so it went, right up to the time the check came and one of the Yale guys suggested we determine who had how many slices and then do a forward progression.

Not really. He was joking, right? Right?

I’m sure he meant to say proportional allocation or pro-rata distribution – dividing something according to each person's share of the whole. It's not typically called "forward progression" in mathematics.

Using this method, I would pay for the slices I ate, divided by the total slices, times the total bill.

Not wanting to crow about my Fordham bona fides by lecturing the Yale guy about his misuse of higher math terminology, I simply threw a twenty into the pot, and we progressed across Wooster Street to an Italian bakery whose lined-up patrons stretched out the door.

That was all fun, but when the entire dinner conversation – I mean entire – centered on sports, I tuned out (Do I look bored enough in the picture above?). I also started to analyze what was going on.

The differences between male social groupings and female are profound:

Men often bond by doing things together—sports, projects, shared interests—with friendship developing alongside the activity.

Men's groups tend toward more hierarchical communication with clear turn-taking, friendly competition or teasing, and bonding through shared activities rather than emotional disclosure.

Male groups often use teasing, playful insults and humor to bond.

Men's groups typically establish clear hierarchies and status, sometimes through competitive elements. Hell, isn’t this whole blog an example of my competitiveness with the Yale men?

By the end of the meal, the group had reached a conclusion. The next gathering would not be for pizza, but to take in a Yale hockey game next month.

I will be facilitating a healing poetry retreat weekend then and, unfortunately, will be unable to attend. Whew!

The More Things Change

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 21:30:01 GMT

"The colossal sense of failure in the midst of success.”

I celebrated another birthday last week, a lofty number I thought I’d never see. The older I get, however, the more I understand that not much really changes in this life and in this world.

I like to read an excerpt of Thomas Merton’s Journals most mornings. This gifted writer was a perspicacious observer of his place in history, even though he peered from the confines of a Trappist monastery in the hills of Kentucky.

Last week, for example, in a journal entry from 1962, he wrote of being almost forty-eight years old.

“It is doubtless time to feel a change of climate in my physical being, which begins to dispose itself for its end some one of these years.”

Bingo, Thomas! I was in my forties when I was assailed by two contradictions. I was at the height of my physical attributes, training to run the New York City Marathon, while sensing that my body was beginning to “dispose itself for its end.” Eyesight diminishing. Hair thinning. Cheeks thickening.

In Merton’s 1962, our government was determined to deepen our involvement in Vietnam, believing we could succeed where the French didn’t.

Contrast Merton’s 1962 assessment with our country’s current state of affairs:

". . . this sense of death and desperation running through my whole society with all its bombs and its money and its death wish. The colossal sense of failure in the midst of success.”

Bingo, Thomas! Vietnam was only the beginning. We learned nothing as a people. We kept electing leaders who found any excuse to involve us militarily in every far corner of the world.

Since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, there have been almost twenty major U.S. combat operations, extended deployments, and significant military actions. My quick count doesn’t include our smaller military presence and advisory roles in numerous other countries.

Our pugnacious attitude isn’t uniquely American. Read the Hebrew Scriptures or review world history, and find that our persona as homo sapiens is one of war after war after war.

Homo sapiens . Latin for wise man . Wise? Really?

So the violence we’re going through right now is really not all that new. What is it the French say? "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." The more things change, the more they stay the same.

This phrase, I’m told, is attributed to French critic and journalist Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr, who wrote it in 1849 to express the idea that even when there appear to be dramatic changes or upheavals, the underlying situation or human nature remains fundamentally the same.

But for me, the most arresting – and disturbing – words from Merton’s journal last week were these, because they apply so aptly to me, and maybe to you, as well:

“Now is the time I must learn to stop taking satisfaction in what I have done or being depressed because the night will come and my work will come to an end. Now is the time to give what I have to others and not reflect on it. I wish I had learned the knack of it, of giving without question or care. I have not, but perhaps I still have time to try.”

And yet, isn’t change our greatest source of hope in these times?

Poet Jane Hirshfield thinks so. She pins her hope on the truth articulated by Greek philosopher Heraclitus three thousand years ago: panta rei. Everything changes.

A Healing Weekend Getaway

Sun, 19 Oct 2025 10:33:51 GMT

I will guide a weekend of emotional healing on the Connecticut shore. And you're invited.

Many of us are turned off to poetry because a high school English teacher thought poetry is about answers. Poetry is not about answers, it’s about questions. And the kind of healing verses we’ll talk about during my upcoming poetry retreat can go a long way toward smoothening some of life’s rough edges.

Numerous studies have shown that writing poetry has exceptional healing power over emotional trauma, with general enhancement of immune system function, fewer physical symptoms, reduced pain, and better sleep.

I will guide a weekend of emotional healing — “Writing for Wellbeing: Emotional Healing through Expressive Writing” — at Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in Madison, Connecticut, November 7 to 9.

You’re invited. Or you might think about gifting a friend or loved one with this restorative, getaway weekend in a beautiful, peaceful, and inspirational setting on the Connecticut shore.

The healing poems I introduce to participants are easy to understand, beautiful, uplifting, and able to help us come to terms with the stresses of a bad diagnosis, a divorce, death of a loved one – just about any emotional trauma we face.

We discuss a poem, spend twenty minutes writing something in response, and then participants share if they want to. It’s a supportive, no-critique, safe space – not an academic class about writing better, but more a contemplative approach to feeling better.

The flow of the weekend will run like this:

• The science of Expressive Writing & its therapeutic benefits

• Poetry versus journaling

• How writing a poem can help you triumph over trauma

• My two secrets for writing a healing poem

• Curing loneliness through writing poems

• Writing poetry for self-discovery, self-healing & self-reliance

• Life’s silver linings – Humor, Gratitude, Hope

• Cherishing yourself

Here's what some of my past participants have said about their experience:

• "Your class has opened a new world to me, and I'm so appreciative.”

• “Your classes provided a very positive experience, opening up the possibility of using poetry to deal with the complex emotions felt by cancer patients. I will treasure these memories in the future, and plan to continue on this path of self-discovery and appreciation for everyday life.”

• “Writing poems has been a great outlet for me and I thank you so much for introducing me to this. It’s very therapeutic and healing.”

The details:

• Dates: Friday, November 7 - Sunday, November 9, 2025

• Price: Single Occupancy $465; Double Occupancy $410 per person (All rooms have ensuite baths; price includes all meals from Friday dinner through Sunday breakfast)

• Commuters: $200, which includes dinner Friday night, and lunch & dinner Saturday

Go to this website for more information and to register: https://www.mercybythesea.org/programs-and-retreats/upcoming-programs/writing-for-wellbeing-november-2025/

How Sweet It Is

Thu, 16 Oct 2025 17:40:45 GMT

Children are the manifestation of their parents' love.

The height of East Coast elitism: Sauntering into New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art last week with a sandwich of French pate and cornichon on a baguette.

Not so fast, Gonzalez. My daughter and I were stopped cold by museum security even as I nonchalantly flashed my member’s card.

“No food allowed in the museum,” the petite young lady announced loudly enough to cause heads to turn and give us the disdainful look New Yorkers reserve for visiting philistines.

“I wasn’t going to eat it in the museum,” daughter offered. “It’s for my lunch later.”

The security gal pulled herself up to her full 5’2” presence and shot back, “You have to take it outside.”

If you read my blog last week, you’ll remember that I was unable to decide when to get into Manhattan to take in the new “Divine Egypt” exhibit at the Met.

My solution was to invite my daughter, Julie, to go with me as my guest, thereby ensuring I would actually work up the energy to go at all.

It turned out to be a day unlike my typical solo forays from my Connecticut home to the city.

For starters, when I visit the Met Museum, I usually walk the forty-plus blocks from Grand Central to Eighty-second and Fifth. But with daughter in tow, I treated her to a cab. Ka-ching. $25.26.

Before boarding the cab, she wanted to drop into Pave, the gourmet sandwich shop on Forty-sixth. It was there that my vegetarian daughter acquired the pate sandwich. Ka-ching. $18.85

By way of explanation, you have to understand that this is the kid who knew how to dip lobster into melted butter at two years of age – while sitting in a high chair! (My wife was a teacher and took seriously the education of our two daughters, including how to eat a steamed lobster.)

Having been metaphorically but soundly smacked down by museum security, we found a place to sit on the Met’s grand but cold steps for Julie to dispatch the sandwich.

After, of course, buying a bottle of five-dollar sparkling water to wash down the sandwich. Ka-ching. $5.06.

After the museum we had to have lunch, of course: two salads and a glass of house wine at Nectar. Ka-ching. $104.38.

And so it went all day.

But. A Dad cannot put a price on his child’s eyes brightening with the thrill of seeing new things – still, after all the years since she was little enough to carry with one arm.

I have to this day the memory of my other daughter, Wendy, when I took her at four years of age to the Christmas show at Radio City, watching her walk alone into the cavernous entry portal to the women’s room. My eyes misted, knowing this was simply her first steps toward my losing her to independence.

A few years ago The Guardian newspaper in the United Kingdom carried a story in which the writer, Declan Fitzsimons, bemoaned the fact that at fifty-two years old, he was unmarried.

He wondered what it would be like to have a daughter:

“Would she have my eyes? My smile? What is it like to see in a child little mannerisms, a way of doing things, moving, speaking, laughing, playing, that remind us of ourselves? Or of course, she may have the eyes of my loved one. And what a joy that would be, to see in our child’s face, our love; to bring into this world a beautiful child that was of us – a child that would grow into her own person but growing out of who we are.”

Declan’s story was titled “Childless At 52: How Sweet It Would Be To Be Called Dad.”

As the Dad of two daughters, I declare Declan correct. It is sweet.

In my girls, my late wife’s smile lives on. Their eyes are her exact shade of hazel. Their voices on the phone indistinguishable from hers.

I wonder if my Dad recognized in me the manifestation of his love for my mother, as my daughters manifest my love for their Mom.

Big Ones Are Easy

Fri, 10 Oct 2025 09:09:54 GMT

Pyramids and pizza – confessions of a non-decider

My late father-in-law had a million of ‘em. Trouble was, they were corny as Kansas in August.

Here’s one I must have heard from him a hundred times:

“Do you have trouble making decisions?”

“Gee, I’m not sure.”

On Wednesday it hit me like never before – I have trouble making decisions. Not big ones. Little ones.

I was plagued by two decisions I couldn’t make:

• Should I visit the subscriber preview of the Divine Egypt exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art the next day?

• Should I join a group of neighbor guys who are planning a Wooster Street pizza crawl the afternoon of October 25?

Now, you have to understand that in my life I’ve made some huge decisions without thinking twice:

• Proposing marriage

• Starting my own company

• Buying/building several houses

But as I write this, these two upcoming, trivial events have me frozen. To go or not to go? To be or not to be?

Experts say a struggle with indecision stems from a fear of making the wrong choice amid the available options, leading to a paralysis that leaves one feeling anxious and unfulfilled.

Indecision is, in itself, a decision to remain stagnant. Making a choice, regardless of the outcome, is better than remaining stuck in a kind of limbo.

Research identifies people who struggle with taking stands or committing to positions as "indecisive" or "lukewarm" personalities.

Indecisiveness is defined as "the subjective inability to make satisfactory decisions" and is considered a trait that has detrimental effects.

This isn't simply about being unable to choose between options, they say, but rather a deeper pattern of avoiding firm commitments.

Studies suggest that one in five adults exhibit chronic indecisiveness. In other words, inability to make decisions is a significant psychological phenomenon – not an occasional struggle.

Common causes of indecisiveness include:

1. Fear of making the wrong choice : A primary factor that can paralyze decision-making.

2. Overwhelming number of options : Too many choices can lead to confusion and uncertainty.

3. Anxiety : The stress that comes from feeling unsure can contribute to indecision.

4. Lack of clarity : Uncertainty about personal goals and values can make it difficult to evaluate options effectively.

5. Desire for perfection : The belief that every decision must be perfect may lead to hesitation.

6. Fear of mistakes : Concern over making a wrong choice can prevent action.

These factors create a cycle that reinforces indecisiveness, leading to inaction and frustration.

So here I am, writing this blog post Wednesday evening. I still can’t decide if I should head to the Met Museum tomorrow or Friday.

I know myself. If I postpone going to the museum tomorrow, I’ll find an excuse to not go on Friday. And I will end up missing the exhibit entirely.

I need my Mommy to tell me what to do . . .

A Word about Women

Fri, 03 Oct 2025 19:28:12 GMT

From Norse halls to modern America, the thread remains unbroken.

Picture a Viking housewife, spindle in hand. All she does is weave, you think, while her husband and his pals are on a business trip, raping and pillaging. You'd be dead wrong.

Between 800 and 1066 A.D., the threads these women spun didn't just create fabric for clothing or trade. They wove the very fabric of society.

They identified strongly with Frigg, queen of the Norse gods, whose statue is depicted above. She ruled at the side of Odin with a spindle as her scepter.

For Viking women, the act of weaving represented both economic contribution and artistic expression. Their spindles held a kind of power to such a great degree that they were seen not just as nurturers but also as protectors of Norse society.

The echo of these ancient women still resonates:

My grandmother, Thekla, named after the first Christian martyr, a follower of Saint Paul and a symbol for the empowerment of women because she preached and baptized – roles typically performed only by men. At nineteen years of age, my grandmother walked off her family’s farm in Western Ukraine and traveled some 5,000 miles to America. Illiterate, no English, no AMEX card. She thrived, owning her own home and raising four successful children.
My wife’s grandmother, an immigrant from Italy, became a union organizer in the textile factory where she’d found work.
My wife, Jo Anne: daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend, kindergarten teacher, dance teacher, choreographer, den mother, corporate event producer, model, voiceover artist, and actress.
My older daughter, Wendy, who as a stay-at-home mom raised three young men – one a doctor – and reconstructed her career and identity from the ground up when her husband's infidelity shattered her world. She didn't just survive that devastation; she transformed it into a second act.
And Julie, my younger daughter, who became a widow at twenty-eight when a drunk driver ended her husband's life in a head-on collision. Now she's managing breast cancer while writing poetry so breathtaking it hurts to read – turning pain into art that will outlive us all.

Like this recent one:

I see all around me:

guardians pushing wheelchairs

heads covered by scarves

faces obscured by masks.

I’m lucky.

I can still pass as “Normal.”

My once-thick hair -- to me -- is thin and drab

but I still have enough to pass as “Normal.”

My once-olive complexion is mottled by vitiligo and my face is pale

but I can use makeup and still pass as “Normal.”

My Brooke Shields’ eyebrows are now sparse and scraggly

but I can color them in and still pass as “Normal.”

My energy is sapped so that I can barely ascend a flight of stairs

but I’m walking and can still pass as “Normal.”

It’s not Vanity.

All I want to do is pass as Normal.

From Viking halls to modern America, the thread remains unbroken. These women—ancient and contemporary, famous and unknown—share something fundamental: they transform their circumstances into power. They weave meaning from chaos, strength from suffering, legacy from everyday acts of courage.

That's what the spindle always meant. Not submission, but sovereignty. Not limitation, but limitless determination.

Women of power aren't a new cultural phenomenon. They've always been here. Trivialize them at your own peril.

Julie Yaremko, Jo Anne Yaremko, Wendy Yaremko

Temple of the Present

Thu, 25 Sep 2025 09:02:27 GMT

Saints and poets aren’t residents of earth. Their dwelling is the Temple of the Present.

A fellow alumnus of Saint Basil Prep was in Connecticut last week and invited me to join him in visiting our alma mater. My instinct was to turn him down. Why? For no other reason than my anxiety that I can’t afford a day away from my desk, even in retirement.

But I remembered my recent resolution to take my inner child on play dates, and I agreed.

In our hyperconnected world, where multitasking has become a badge of honor, the simple act of being present has become a radical pursuit.

Living in the present moment, however, is more than a philosophical ideal. It’s a scientifically validated pathway to well-being and quality of life.

We wandered for hours around the campus that stands as an oasis of landscaped greenery in the concrete and asphalt wasteland that has become Stamford. We prowled through the several school buildings, peering into the classrooms in which we suffered through language, science, and math classes. We sat in the chapel pews we occupied decades ago. We even opened closed closet doors to see what was inside.

The human mind's tendency is to dwell on past regrets and future anxieties.

This is why we want to go back in time to relive happy moments. The stuff from the good old days is “settled law.” We lived it. It turned out okay. We needn’t worry about it. We can relive the good times and relive them and relive them, relishing our nostalgic sentimentality.

But Thich Nhat Hanh, the renowned Zen master, has said that the present moment is filled with joy and happiness. “If you are attentive, you will see it."

Maybe. But sometimes – no, often – I have to look awfully hard to see the joy.

I have a hunch that you have to be either a saint or a poet to be really, truly attentive to the moment and in touch with the wonder of being alive.

Poet T. S. Eliot thought saints live at the intersection of time and timelessness. I would add poets, too.

The saint's aspiration is union with God through self-surrender and love. The poet's is toward the creation of aesthetic works that translate transcendent truths to others.

In other words, the saint's existence at the intersection of time and timelessness is fundamentally about being, while the poet's engagement with this intersection is primarily about making.

Remember the scene in Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town?

EMILY: "Does anyone ever realize life while they live it . . . every, every minute?"

STAGE MANAGER: "No. Saints and poets maybe . . . they do some.”

But both saints and poets aren’t residents of planet earth as you and I are. Their dwelling is the Temple of the Present.

There, in the temple, they observe the little, thus making sense of the large. So the poet's quest is the same as the saint's—a continuous journey toward deeper understanding. One lives it, the other articulates it.

As poet Mary Oliver put it: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

Doing What I Can

Thu, 18 Sep 2025 11:03:49 GMT

Even in hardest times, creativity can light the way forward.

I was privileged last week to bring my Healing Verses Workshop to The Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City, a welcome expansion of my volunteer efforts to guide people in writing poems to help ease emotional trauma.

This is the press release issued by the hospital:

The Center of Excellence for Cancer Support Services at Mount Sinai launched its new Art Fridays program on September 12 with a poetry workshop at the Dubin Breast Center in East Harlem, welcoming nearly a dozen patients, caregivers, and staff. The monthly enrichment series is designed to provide creative outlets that support healing, connection, and self-expression.

Author and poet Peter Yaremko, who shared how poetry can help people process the emotional weight of cancer, led the inaugural session. Participants heard poems by distinguished writers who turned to poetry in times of illness and grief, and then wrote their own personal reflections.

“The whole purpose is to put on paper the feelings that are bothering you, so you can unburden yourself and find some peace,” Yaremko explained. “Poetry doesn’t take away pain, but it provides companionship in the grief journey.”

Yaremko’s commitment to leading healing poetry workshops is deeply personal. After losing his wife to cancer ten years ago, he turned to poetry as a way to cope with his grief. Writing became a space where he could slow down, reflect, and begin to heal. Inspired by how transformative the practice was for him, Yaremko now shares this gift with others facing illness or loss, guiding patients and caregivers to discover how words can bring comfort, peace, and resilience.

For patient Lisa Atkins, a Brooklyn resident, the event felt like a sign. “This class was inspirational. Art is healing because there’s no right or wrong—you can just express yourself freely,” she said. “My dad was a poet, and I saw this as a way to reconnect with him, and with myself, after my cancer diagnosis.

“This workshop reminded me that even in the middle of a cancer journey, I can find moments of joy and expression. Writing poetry helped me put my feelings into words and feel connected to others who understand what it’s like,” she said.

Alison Snow, PhD, LCSW, co-director of the Center of Excellence for Cancer Support Services at Mount Sinai, described the gathering as intimate and moving.

“Everyone was holding back tears,” she reflected. “Art allows patients to tap into creativity, feel safe, and form bonds with one another. You could see those connections happening around the table.”

The Art Fridays series will continue this fall with workshops in painting, cooking, and interior design.

“We’re excited to see this program grow,” Snow said. “Through art, we want to give patients and caregivers moments of beauty, healing, and hope, a reminder that even in the hardest times, creativity can light the way forward.”

Hope Is a Decision

Sat, 13 Sep 2025 09:35:38 GMT

It comes as no surprise that a July poll finds most of us have lost faith in the American dream. Seventy-five percent of Americans see little hope for improving their economic status and nearly seventy percent say the idea that “if you work hard, you will get ahead,” no longer holds true, or never did.

So at a recent Zoom gathering of my Healing Verses workshop, we took a look at how poetry might help. This is precisely what poetry does – help us make sense of life. What we found was eye-opening and encouraging.

For starters, I could find precious few poems that focus on hope. I was damned if I was going to spend an hour rehashing Emily Dickinson’s paean to "the thing with feathers / that perches in the soul."

So I decided to write my own poem:

There Are No Poems about Hope

By Peter W Yaremko

The assignment was to bring a poem

about hope to class. But I couldn’t find any.

Not one. Not anywhere among the labyrinth

that is Google. ChatGPT let me down

as well as Claude.ai. Even Poem Hunter.

We must be so full up of hope there’s no need

for poets to suffer for it or sing of it.

Such a sissy word. A girl’s name, for Chrissake.

No wonder poets don’t bother with it.

“Do not go hopeful into that good night?”

No. Doesn’t work.

Could it be we don’t know what hope is?

We pray for faith, hope and charity all the time.

Faith and charity I can understand. But

what do we hope for? Maybe we shouldn’t

hope for, or hope that, or hope if. Just simply

hope. Or just simply change hope to dream.

Hope has had many definitions through the ages, and philosophers and psychologists have had a lot to say.

One constant is hope's fundamental connection to our ability as humans to project ourselves into imagined futures and find meaning there. In other words, to dream.

Which is why writer Ilia Delio defines hope as “the main impulse of life.”

Legendary author Fyodor Dostoevsky chimes in with: "To live without hope is to cease to live."

Mark Twain is his usual blunt self: "Without dreams and goals there is no living, merely existing, and that is not why we are here."

And Langston Hughes, the great voice of the Harlem Renaissance warns:

Hold fast to dreams,

for if dreams die,

life is a broken-winged bird,

that cannot fly.

To my way of thinking, the concept of hope that checks all the boxes and puts further debate to rest is this one by French philosopher Gabriel Marcel: “The essence of hope is not to hope that . . . but merely to hope. The person who hopes does not accept the current situation as final.”

Václav Havel, the poet who became president of the Czech Republic, says much the same thing: “Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense regardless of how it turns out."

During the writing period of the workshop, participants created poems that heartened me, and I hope will uplift you:

Parens Patriae

By SJ Harrold

The day I slugged my father was uneventful as I recall.

I must’ve done whatever a thoughtless boy does

to someone, or something or,

perhaps I did nothing and that was the sin.

In my tiny room, hearing his heavy steps

stomping down the hall, closing in.

Another beating penciled-in from loving dad.

Crashing through the door,

thick fingers stabbed my puny chest

and his lips peppered foamy spit.

Untethered,

my pot melted.

A robot fist punched him

square in his fleshy jaw.

He played the stunned mullet,

bulged eyes and gaping mouth,

dropping to the floor

like a sack of whatever.

A damaged chip ripped off the flawed block.

The parched apple finally dropped from the hoary tree.

Perfect harmony.

Amidst the circus bear dance

my reptile brain fired.

Enveloped in shame,

I fell back, defenseless.

He pummeled away to my crocodile tears.

We knew no better.

I still grieve that.

Life and death in September

By Paul Bumbar

September 3, 1939, Sunday morning in Buffalo, NY,

In a wood frame, rented house on Timon Street,

Sophia Bumbar gave birth to me her third child ( second son )

in the same bed she and my father had been sharing

for the over three years since their wedding.

My life – as with most – begins in love and life goes on.

September 3, 1939, that same day,

the “war to end all wars” was reprised

as England and France declare war on Germany and World War II begins.

Death and destruction for six years.

Worldwide, up to 80 million people – soldiers and civilians - will die.

September 3, 2025, 80 years after it had begun,

thousands in Tienamin Square commemorate the end of the war

with dictators reviewing marching military and rolling weapons of destruction,

all the while professing peace, but the drums of war go on,

and so do birthdays.

Assisted living

By Tina Peel

Leaning over his walker

Glasses slipping down his nose

He slowly navigates the pathway

Over to the garden that reminds him of his youth

There, he keeps watch

as he did long ago

Weeding

Watering

Muttering

Expecting sweet corn to come

From a plant that’s mostly stalk right now

“A couple more weeks, or maybe three,”

he guesses

And as each day passes, he waits

As a wad of silky golden thread

Lures him into believing

That yes,

That sweet ear of corn will come

A millennium ago Japanese poetess Izumi Shikibu found cause for hope in the moon beaming through the broken roof of a desolate house. It was about the year 1000 when she wrote:

Although the wind

blows terribly here,

the moonlight also leaks

between the roof planks

of this ruined house.

And today, poet Alexandra Vasiliu offers this advice:

Never empty your heart of hope.

Try to copy the moon

because on her lowest days,

a crescent moon starts to rise.

So, my darling,

imitate the moon.

It all comes down to this: hope, like faith and love, is an act of will power . . . a decision.

Child Neglect

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 11:57:14 GMT

Doctor Google advises me that my waking up every night at two o’clock may be caused by stress. It took some time for this to hit home because I’m the guy who is spending his retirement guiding others in writing poems to ease their emotional stress, anxiety, and trauma.

I don’t need to be Doctor House to diagnose my situation. In leaving the corporate business world, I’ve merely transferred my work ethic to my retirement routine.

My day, for example, is scheduled in Excel in half-hour increments – right down to “shave, shower, dress, make bed” – that I adhere to and closely monitor. I track my weight and blood pressure every morning. I set a daily goal.

I do work every day, including weekends, whether it’s putting together my weekly blogs, writing and submitting poems, or preparing lessons for the poetry classes I conduct.

I can’t remember taking a real vacation since my wife died almost ten years ago.

Even when I lived in the vacation paradises of Cape Cod and Puerto Rico, I couldn’t just sit still and enjoy life. I had to turn both houses into bed-and-breakfasts and strive for perfect Trip Advisor ratings.

Does this sound anal retentive? You bet.

I remember many years ago coming across a book about caring for your “inner child.” The author advised us to ensure our inner child has plenty of play dates.

Have I been doing this? No. In fact, I’ve been guilty of child neglect.

A 2020 study in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry found that people who engage their inner child decrease anxiety symptoms by a third, with a twenty-five percent improvement in emotional well-being.

And according to John K. Pollard, author of Self-Parenting: The Complete Guide to Your Inner Conversations , the inner child represents the part of us that holds our needs, feelings, and vulnerabilities.

“The inner child,” Pollard writes, “can be a source of joy and creativity.”

That’s for me.

According to the experts, recovery and growth come from acknowledging and nurturing your inner child. Inner child therapy focuses on reconnecting with this part of yourself.

Dr. Louis Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life : “When you heal your inner child, you create a future full of love and happiness.”

Okay, Doc, you don’t have to call me to lunch twice.

I’m going to start treating my inner child to play dates. I have a few things in mind already.

Like seeing a movie every Friday morning – as soon as new releases hit the theaters – no matter how lousy the movie. I’ll call it “Friday Flicks.”

Within a ten-minute walk of my New Haven neighborhood are entire city streets that qualify as “restaurant rows.” Wooster Street, for example, is nationally known for its pizza places. I never go out for lunch – from now on I will. If I find a favorite, I might become a regular, ala Norm in Cheers .

I will actually take the train into New York City – for fun stuff. When I get to Grand Central (for the senior fare of $12.50), I might saunter into Pershing Square for their magnificent chicken pot pie or stroll down Madison Avenue to see whatever exhibit is on at the Morgan Library or just people-watch on a bench in Bryant Park. And grab a food-cart knish and a hamantasch cookie for the train ride back.

Brace yourself, world. Here comes mini-me!

(Top image: Inner Child is a mixed media by Aeron Brown.)

Writing to Feel Better

Thu, 28 Aug 2025 18:51:57 GMT

The kind of poetry that relieves stress

During the next two months, I will guide a number of workshops on writing poems to help relieve some of the stress of emotional trauma – not how to write better, but writing to feel better.

During the weekend of November 7 - 9, I will conduct a program on “Writing for Wellbeing—Emotional Healing through Expressive Writing” at Mercy by the Sea Retreat and Conference Center in Madison, Connecticut.

If you attend, I’ll show you how easy-to-understand poems can be beautiful, uplifting, and healing. Our discussions will center on what poetry is all about, and how famous writers have created poems to address their own personal issues. I’ll show you how to write poems to better manage any emotional trauma – from the stresses of illness or grief to the rupture of a relationship or the loss of purpose and hope.

I’ll share my two secret hacks to get you writing your first poem, and there will periods of reflecting, writing, and sharing.

For details and to register .

That’s in November, for a weekend. On September 12, I will be in Manhattan to conduct a workshop on the healing power of poetry.

My poetry program will launch the Friday Arts initiative at New York City’s Mount Sinai Cancer Center. Friday Arts is a monthly enrichment program designed to nurture creativity, community, and healing for cancer patients, survivors, and caregivers.

This session at Mount Sinai is in addition to the healing poetry gathering I host each week at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge, also in New York City.

And you already know about the “Healing Verses” workshops I hold every other Wednesday via Zoom.

We read set a theme for the meeting, read a poem that speaks to that theme, and then write our own poem.

This Wednesday, September 3, we’re going to talk about the poem, “Let Evening Come” by Jane Kenyon. I’m going to tell the Zoom group what I think is the real definition of hope – and its true healing power.

The Wednesday workshops have a one-hour format:

• Reading and discussing a famous poem that has healing properties

• Quiet time to write your own poem

• An open period when you can read something of your own if you want to

To join my Zoom room – open to everyone – enter this link into your browser: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89034950365?pwd=DEFfvQ1bMqlUX1Wu1qK3mApkR0Q1gH.1

The foundation of the teaching I do is Expressive Writing, a therapeutic discipline developed at the University of Houston in the early 1980s and replicated more than 2,000 times since then.

It’s a kind of writing unlike journaling, and research has shown it yields significant benefits in alleviating emotional trauma, with general enhancement of immune system function, physical health, pain symptoms, sleep, and overall functioning.

In the long term, trauma victims report feeling happier and less negative than before practicing Expressive Writing.

And isn’t that what we all want?

It's No Sin To Be Sad

Thu, 21 Aug 2025 13:38:53 GMT

The worst of times can bring out the best in us.

She was young, tall, and supremely elegant but weak and thin from weeks of surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation. She wrote the loveliest poem I’ve heard in a long time and wept as she read it to me. It’s miraculous, I thought when she and I were together to talk poetry last week, how such beauty blossomed from the dark humus of her disease.

In guiding cancer patients to write poems to ease their emotional trauma, I witness how the rude rigors of cancer treatment magnify emotions and set them very close to the surface. Right beneath the breastplate, it seems, hard against the heart. So expressing feelings in poetry comes more easily than otherwise.

In addition to teaching cancer patients and their caregivers, I conduct workshops in healing poetry for people who are dealing with all sorts of emotional trauma. The phenomenon of heightened creativity applies to all of them. Perhaps due to the fact that all emotional trauma exhibit common characteristics: unexpected, unwanted, and seemingly beyond our ability to make them stop.

I continue to be awed at how men and women with no background in writing can craft breathtaking poems that grow out of the fertile soil of their suffering.

They are testimony to what I always tell them: “What you learn in this room will not lead you to poetry as much as what you bring with you into this room.”

The myth of the suffering artist is misleading. It’s not suffering itself that produces creativity, but the psychological growth and awareness that arise from it.

In her 2007 book When Walls Become Doorways , psychologist Tobi Zausner writes:

“Life’s lowest moments can hold our greatest potential for creativity and transformation. When the wall of illness becomes a door of opportunity, the worst of times can bring out the best in us.”

As an aside, you should know that when Zausner was diagnosed with the most aggressive kind of ovarian cancer in 1989, she was told she would not last the year. Instead, her life changed for the better and she completed a doctorate in art and psychology.

The healing poetry I teach is founded on the discipline of Expressive Writing developed at the University of Houston and replicated more than 2,000 times.

The premise: writing for just fifteen to twenty minutes a day about a topic that triggers strong emotion has been shown to help people garner meaning and a measure of relief from their stress.

Marcel Proust was on board with the idea long ago. He wrote:

“Ideas come to us as the successors of griefs. And griefs, at the moment they change into ideas, lose some part of their power to injure the heart.”

Author Mark Nepo stresses that we cannot choose to indulge solely in happiness. He writes:

“If you are thirsty, you can’t dip your face to the stream and say, ‘I’ll only drink the hydrogen and not the oxygen.’ If you remove one from the other, the water cannot remain water. The life of feeling is no different. We cannot drink only of happiness or sorrow and have life remain life.”

My Catholic faith advises me to “offer up” any suffering that comes my way in order to remove its weight from my shoulders. I say no. I say embrace sadness and suffering. It’s a portion of our humanity and has yielded some of our most creative achievements as a species.

As proof, here’s the young woman’s poem that took my breath away last week, drawn from her experience with radiation treatment:

I settle into the bed

that is not a bed

into the cradle

that is not a cradle

nestling deeper like a pine cone

on the forest floor

this bed that is not a bed

holds no

sweet dreams

or lazy Sundays

cookie crumbs

or lovemaking

thirty seconds until your first beam

a crackly voice announces

bang whirl whoosh

it’s happening now

I imagine light gliding through me

filling me

spilling out of me

the machine quiets

I suppose I am healed now

As Dr. Zausner puts it: “When the wall of illness becomes a door of opportunity, the worst of times can bring out the best in us.”

Starship Commanders

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 13:27:02 GMT

I worked with Jim Lovell twice. This is my tribute to him.

I’ve had the opportunity to work with two starship commanders. One was the hero of Apollo 13. The other the hero of TV’s original Star Trek series.

During my years at IBM, ROLM, Siemens, and Executive Media, my work as a speechwriter expanded to encompass writing and producing live corporate events. These were also known as business theater—recognition meetings, sales rallies, management conferences—for audiences ranging from a few hundred to more than 10,000.

One of the benefits of being a producer is that the job enabled me to indulge my boyhood fantasies.

In creating program content that would excite and motivate audiences, I was influenced by my boyhood passion for science fiction.

I had watched Captain Video on my family’s black-and-white Dumont and deported myself as one of his “Video Rangers.”

I was in the movie theaters for the premieres of the 1950s sci-fi movies that are now classic: “The Thing” … “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” … “The Day the Earth Stood Still.”

So it was a natural for me to hire Jim Lovell, whose heroic performance brought the crippled Apollo 13 and its crew safely home. That’s him in the top photo, along with his team of lunar module pilot Fred Haise and command module pilot Jack Swigert.

Captain Lovell served as on-camera narrator of an identity video for the high-tech ROLM Corporation, which pioneered voicemail among other telecommunications innovations.

I picked him up at SFO, noticing how he put on his seat belt first thing. As we drove down Route 101 past Moffett Field, he reminisced about testing planes tethered to an anchor post inside one of Moffett’s vast hangars.

In the car that day, I asked Captain Lovell the question that had burned since my days as a Video Ranger: “Just how strong is the thrust you feel when you lift off?”

His disappointing answer: “About the same as accelerating a car.”

Heck, Captain Video had me believing the acceleration of lift-off practically flattened your eyeballs.

Captain Lovell was a delight to work with—affable, patient, and a natural on camera. I hired him a second time to speak to a ROLM recognition event about his near-fatal Apollo 13 experience.

Then there was Captain Kirk—William Shatner. You remember: “To boldly go . . . ”

On stage in front of six hundred or so top performers at a different ROLM recognition event, the CEO—a German national—talked with a video-projected Captain Kirk who was supposedly orbiting Earth in the Starship Enterprise.

Then, using what’s known as a “laser cone” effect, we beamed Shatner down to the stage to join the CEO and help him conduct an awards ceremony.

Shatner turned out to be a not-so-good choice.

For one thing, he toyed with the CEO and kept going off prompter. Shatner enjoyed tripping up the CEO, who was trying to follow a carefully crafted script to help him with what was his second language.

I came away thinking that Shatner seriously thinks he’s a starship commander.

The difference between the two? One of these starship commanders was a real hero. The other only played one on TV.

Lukewarm and In-between

Fri, 08 Aug 2025 09:48:01 GMT

In an era of divisiveness, where do we stand? Or do we stand at all?

The Bible’s book of Revelation shows no patience for those who take no stand: “Because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out.” Harsh words for not doing something.

Why are we so reluctant to commit? Social and psychological pressures play a major role.

Many of us fear social rejection, career consequences, or being ostracized.

Humans also suffer from a strong leaning toward conformity. It’s easier and safer to adopt the stance of our fellows instead of developing an independent position.

Research distinguishes between two types of commitment:

• Approach commitment is driven by a desire for future rewards

• Avoidance commitment tries to duck the negative consequences of broken relationships

Solomon Asch's experiments in the 1950s demonstrated the power of group pressure. In his studies, participants conformed to obviously incorrect group answers approximately thirty-seven percent of the time.

Asch noted, "The tendency to conformity in our society is so strong that reasonably intelligent and well-meaning young people are willing to say white is black."

Stanley Milgram was another researcher into “obedience.” His findings showed how strong authority figures are able to influence conformity: two-thirds of participants were okay with administering dangerous electric shocks when told to.

Pressures toward conformity remain robust today, with social media amplifying pack mentality through features such as likes and shares.

It’s this kind of societal uniformity that may give rise to statements like, “their marriage failed.” Marriages don’t fail, people do.

“Mistakes were made” is a side-step. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but people make mistakes.

Look at how flat-out honest the composer of Psalm 41 states what happened to him:

My best friend, whom I trusted,

who broke bread with me,

has scorned me and turned against me.

What happens when we’re unwilling to take a stand on important matters? Experts tell us such individuals may struggle to develop a sense of self.

This can lead to a life spent in the slipstream of others.

Sailors, when a storm threatens, head out to sea. They know the most dangerous place is at the dock.

Author Mark Nepo notes this about the ocean: the deep is safest. Near the shore are rocks to be battered against and undertow to fight. By comparison, the deep is a “hammock.”

Peter of Alcantara, Spain, was a sixteenth-century saint known for his energetic efforts toward reforming the Catholic Church. His advice to those of us who fear cutting against the grain: “Matters in the world are in a truly bad state. But if you and I begin in earnest to reform ourselves, a really good beginning will be made.”

Still not convinced? Then turn to the gospel according to Charles M. Schulz, as found in The Complete Peanuts:

Patty: I'll be the good guy.

Shermy: I'll be the bad guy.

Patty: What are you going to be, Charlie Brown?

Charlie Brown: I'll be sort of in-between; I'll be a hypocrite.

(The painting above is “Portrait of Dr. Gachet,” by van Gogh)

The Examined Life

Thu, 31 Jul 2025 22:19:00 GMT

Who am I? Why am I here? Where am I going? Yes, there are answers – right within ourselves.

When the rooster who lives in my brain wakes me each morning at 3:30 or 4:00 (which is all the sleep old men need), I like to have a couple of cups of coffee while I read something uplifting.

Three readings last week told me the same truth in different words.

It began with Thomas Merton’s Journal entry of July 31, 1961. On that day, the monk-mystic-poet-author came to the realization that truth is found in the reality of his own life, “as it is given to me . . . by complete consent and acceptance.”

In other words, I am what I am, and there’s no changing that despite my most fervent yearning otherwise.

Second was this quote from Saint Gianna Molla: “The secret of happiness is to live moment by moment and to thank God for all that he sends us day after day.”

In other words, it’s all good, because God does not impose evil on us. And I can attest to this. In the autumn of my life, I can look back and witness how the most outrageous strokes of bad luck have all turned out for the best. All of them.

I had never heard of Saint Gianna, but a turn through Wiki educated me. She was a pediatrician in Italy who, during her fourth pregnancy in 1961, developed a fibroma on her uterus. The options were an abortion, a hysterectomy, or the removal of the fibroma alone.

She opted for the removal of the fibroma, reasoning that her child's life was more important than her own. She successfully delivered a daughter by Caesarean section, but died of septic peritonitis a week later. The daughter became a doctor of geriatrics.

Finally, there was a chapter from Mark Nepo’s blockbuster, The Book of Awakening.

Nepo draws a parallel between Thích Nhất Hạnh’s enlightenment comes when the wave realizes it is water, and the enlightenment that can be ours the moment we realize we’re made of – love.

Think about it. I, for one, entered existence because of the passionate love of two young people.

What does it do to our fear of living when we realize we’re made not only by love, but also for love?

Writes Nepo: “Grace comes to the heart when it realizes what it is made of and what it has risen from.”

When Moses asked God’s name, barefoot before the burning bush as Chagall portrays him, above, he was told: “I am who am.”

Spiritual writers aren’t alone in probing the nature of being. Some of the unlikeliest people are amateur ontologists.

Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the Star Trek franchise, once wrote a script titled “The God Thing.” As a result, he was interviewed about his religious beliefs. He said:

“I believe I am God; certainly you are; I think we intelligent beings on this planet are all a piece of God, are becoming God. In some sort of cyclical non-time thing we have to become God so that we can end up creating ourselves, so that we can be in the first place.”

In a way, we are the same stuff as God. Existence. Ani mi shani in Hebrew. Esse in Latin. Being.

This is the truth behind all our pseudo-philosophical flailing about “Be yourself” . . . “Be all you can be” . . . “Too big for your britches.”

This is the truth revealing the thinness of the skin separating us from the other members of the human herd.

This is the truth driving the Socratic dictum: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

In the dark of my library before dawn last week, many voices were speaking to me as one. I am what I am. Made simply to be and to love, for I rose from love.

Yes, I have memories and I have dreams, but there is no past, no future. Eternity is in the present. Waiting for me to unclench my fist.

Poetry or Pickleball?

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 12:40:10 GMT

Writing poetry is enabling me to dodge the Grim Reaper. Teaching others to do it is the blessing.

There were an estimated 19.8 million pickleball players in 2024 in the U.S. On the other hand, sales of poetry books amounted to about three million – less than 0.4% of total book sales. So why do I even bother writing and teaching poetry?

Because I’m not about to move to The Villages, drive around in a golf cart like a Fred Flintstone wannabe, and play pickleball until my knees give out.

Research tells us that male mortality increases by two percent in the very month men start claiming their Social Security benefits.

So the answer for me is, publish or perish – literally.

It was novelist Thornton Wilder who said seniors need to stave off death through work – even if it’s work that no longer drives a career.

It’s not only the act of writing poetry that is enabling me to give the Grim Reaper a run. Teaching others to do it is a major factor.

Volunteer work simply makes you feel good, as the above photo of the Hope Lodge staff and volunteers attests. Supporting others has even been found to reduce chronic inflammation. At least one study shows high levels of social support lower cortisol and inflammatory proteins.

Three years ago I took Wilder’s wise advice and made it my “old man’s project” to teach cancer patients and their caregivers how to write poems that help them feel happier and healthier.

One “student” told me: “Writing poems has been a great outlet for me, and I thank you so much for introducing me to this. It’s very therapeutic and healing.”

Another said: “Your class has opened a new world to me, and I'm so appreciative.”

You can imagine how comments like those make me feel. It can’t compare to winning a pickleball match.

My program with the American Cancer Society is called Verses of Hope. Once a week I commute from my home in New Haven to the Society’s Hope Lodge, a block from Madison Square Garden.

My involvement with Hope Lodge seemed to peak on Wednesday during a reception for the New York City social workers and medical center representatives who are responsible for referring patients to stay at Hope Lodge during their scheduled treatment regimens.

The aim was to show these visitors the range of services available to Lodge guests during their stay: reiki, estate planning, movement, play, art therapy, healing cuisine, and, of course, my therapeutic poetry writing.

I was able to personally meet and brief eighteen persons during the reception and all of them – all of them – walked away sold on the physical and emotional benefits of expressive writing.

When the reception ended at seven o’clock, I set up in the Society’s meeting room and conducted my Zoom poetry workshop, which I offer every other Wednesday.

I began these bi-weekly workshops last month as an effort to provide ongoing support for writing healing poetry. It’s a supportive, no-critique, safe space – all about feeling better, not just writing better.

We read and discuss a poem that has healing attributes, spend fifteen minutes writing a poem in response, and the remainder of the hour is an open microphone period for participants to share their poem if they want to.

Each workshop has a theme relevant to emotional stress, anxiety, or trauma. So far, we’ve explored themes of fear, perseverance, humor, coping, and self-discovery. Our next Zoom gathering will be at 7 P.M. Eastern on August 6. We’ll see what the poem “Those Winter Sundays” can teach us about self-healing.

The workshops are open not only to cancer patients, but also to anyone who would like to apply poetry to smoothen some of life’s rough edges. Here is the Zoom link.

Rub a Dub Dub

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 19:55:55 GMT

People bathe for a lot of reasons besides getting clean.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now that we humans are creatures that came from the sea. Which might explain our somewhat batty bathing habits.

It’s getting worse, too. The youngest adults among us, Gen Z (ages 18 to 27) spend the longest time in the shower – nearly twice the average 12.3 minutes of baby boomers (ages 60 to 78).

Pulitzer Prize winning naturalist Edward O. Wilson believed that because we evolved in nature, we have a biological need to connect with it.

That makes sense. Our species has historically settled and built our cities near bodies of water. We spend our vacations and our days off sunbathing at beaches.

Simply put, we are biologically meant to bathe, and, while we’re at it, to bask. Both words come from the same Old Norse batha .

One of the greatest virtues of taking a bath is its unique ability to promote physical and mental relaxation – while at the same time juicing our creativity.

Writers, typically a dotty bunch to begin with, are particularly attracted to use the tub as their workspace.

Playwright Oscar Wilde enjoyed lavish baths infused with salts and herbs. He believed that these indulgent moments allowed him to rejuvenate his mind, contributing to his creativity.

Referring to the tranquility of the bath, Wilde once quipped: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”

Henry David Thoreau would often retreat to his bath as a place of contemplation. It was part of his resolve to take to the woods because he wished to live “deliberately.”

In her Pulitzer-Prize-winning, autobiographical novel, The Bell Jar , Sylvia Plath wrote: “I am sure there are things that can't be cured by a good bath, but I can't think of one.”

Maybe her husband’s infidelity was the one? Poor, suffering Sylvia opted to end it all by sticking her head in a gas oven rather than soak in a hot bath.

Poet Rod McKuen wrote song lyrics in his bathtub, and Benjamin Franklin took what he called “tonic baths” each morning, working in the nude for an hour to start his day.

Dalton Trumbo, too, wrote in the bath, but at night and not alone. He enjoyed the company of a parrot, a gift from actor Kirk Douglas.

Agatha Christie was another writer who stripped to write. She composed murder mysteries while soaking in her commodious Victorian bathtub – munching on apples, to boot.

Although he himself wasn’t known for writing plays in the tub, Tennessee Williams must have had some fetish about bathing. In “A Streetcar Named Desire,” he has Blanche constantly jumping in and out of the bath (in an attempt to cleanse herself of her past?).

Contemplative and rejuvenating, indulgent and ascetic. The challenge of the bath lies in navigating the Scylla and Charybdis of luxury and discipline.

All this talk about bathing is getting to me. I think I’ll grab a Granny Smith and edit this essay in the tub.

The God of Empty Spaces

Fri, 11 Jul 2025 23:33:57 GMT

Something’s missing, but you can’t say what?

I’ve made a career choosing and placing words into arrangements certain people have found pleasing. So it’s only natural I view my life as a series of words—a story. But my eyes are opening to the spaces between the words.

It’s not because I’m a writer that I see life as a story. It’s true for each for us. We’re all authors.

Among the words that tell our lives are marriage, kids, work, travel, church, flirting, and so forth.

The longer we live, the more experiences we have, the depth of our relationships—the greater the number of words available to describe ourselves.

In typography, printers have for centuries relied on precise measurements of the spaces that are the tools with which they work—hair space, thin space, leading, word space, picas and points and kerning. In my early days as a newspaper make-up editor, I kept a “pica stick” in my pocket to gauge the accuracy of our efforts.

Now, though, as I grow older, isolation and quietude is revealing my life not only in words, but words separated by empty spaces of silence and stillness—the emptiness of time passing.

Pam Bruno, who attended my day-long program on poetry writing at Mercy by the Sea Conference Center in October, described her “God of empty spaces” in her poem:

The silent spaces in my day

Are more powerful than my words

Living in the stillness

Between two notes

I hear the voice of God

The spaces between the words of my days have always been there, I guess, but I notice them now.

The striking thing is that each empty space is lengthening. They are unwelcome for they carry a sad listlessness.

Remember Wendy Beckett, the famous “Art Nun” from the 2001 PBS documentary series? She once described prayer to the abbess of a women’s monastery like this:

“He [God] wants to possess me. And when I let Him, it is prayer. Always His love drives Him to possess. And when we have time, He enters . . .”

It’s the scariest definition of prayer ever. Scariest because of the qualifier: “. . . when we have time.”

Her words made me realize I’m aware of God only when I choose to have time for him. Mine is the God of empty spaces.

This spring The Penwood Review published this poem, which Sister Wendy’s words inspired me to write:

REVELATION 3:20

His hair drips

with the dew of morning

as he taps.

He’s lusted all night, my swain,

beckoned me unbeknownst

as I slept.

Any lover seeking consummation knocks

roughly, boned knuckles on renitent oak.

But not mine.

This suitor won’t wake me.

He wants me already woke, waiting.

Or he moves on.

As he desires. Only then

beg him enter. Only then endure

his awful love.

We can, however, fill our empty spaces—pausing to listen to rain, for example, relishing a perfect cup of tea, or enjoying conversation with a friend. All these are manifestations of the Divine.

It’s the last example that’s key, I think: conversation with a friend. Engagement calls for community—family, friends, people of like mind.

Don’t take my word for it. Here’s Sister Wendy again, who spent most of her life in utter isolation as a hermit, venturing out only to record her BBC art programs.

She writes: “All persons are made for community. It's not the prerogative of the religious life.”

Fake Freedom

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 21:26:59 GMT

How do we achieve real freedom?

For a society founded on a “declaration of independence,” most of us enjoy very little true freedom these days.

Brown people live in fear of ICE thuggery. Black people face open racism disguised as DEI. White people claim their equal rights are being eroded.

How do we achieve real independence? It starts by understanding what freedom is – and is not.

Spiritual writer Richard Rohr says it this way:

“Most of us try to find personal and individual freedom even as we remain inside structural boxes and a system of consumption that we are then unable or unwilling to critique. Our mortgages, luxuries, and privileged lifestyles control our whole future. Whoever is paying our bills and giving us security and status determines what we can and cannot say or even think.”

In other words, it’s the entrenched institutions, systems, and processes of our culture that keep us willing captives.

I say “willing” because as a society we seem to be clutching some romantic dream of what our all-American life should be. As a result, we’re terrified by any disruption to what we feel is normal and accepted.

When we surrender to this fear and perceive danger all around, we grasp at whatever we think will protect us.

I’ll give you an example. When I lived in Puerto Rico, I learned from the local divers that to catch a Caribbean lobster, all you have to do is push a length of broomstick into the hole where it’s hiding. The lobster will grab it and not let go, even as you pull the stick from the hole and deposit the tasty crustacean in your bag.

So what’s the path to true freedom?

Declare independence by refusing to be co-opted by illusions of security, possessions, and power.

In his classic novel, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance , Robert Pirsig describes “the old South Indian Monkey Trap.”

The trap consists of a hollowed-out coconut chained to a stake. The coconut has some rice inside, which can be grabbed through a small hole. The monkey’s hand fits through the hole okay, but his clenched fist can’t fit back out.

The monkey is trapped, not by anything physical, but by an idea it probably learned from its mother: “When you find rice, hold on tight!”

Psychologists call this einstellung , a settled way of thinking – our instinct to solve a problem in a tried-and-true manner even though there might be better solutions.

Much like the monkey clutching a fistful of rice or the lobster clenching the broomstick, we hold on to things that don’t necessarily serve us. The things we’re most attached to can keep us shackled, too often with toxic effect.

Valuing ourselves only according to our successes and satisfactions is to miss the point of every faith tradition – that contentment comes by valuing ourselves as God does, simply for who we are.

Hovering Through

Tue, 24 Jun 2025 15:34:17 GMT

Tired of being your own Providence?

After so many decades of striving and seeking, it’s time to apply a lesson I learned from snorkeling: just hover and let the wonders of the world come to me.

I like to read the journal of Thomas Merton each day, because his mind was a heated cauldron of ideas, insight, and inspiration.

Last Monday, waking up saddened by so many stressful happenings outside my control, I came across this passage from Merton’s journal of June 24, 1947: “I am tired of being my own Providence.”

He was describing his impatience with himself for being caught up and distracted by the minutiae of life.

I connected this monk’s discomforts with advice I received years ago from my swimming guru, Melon Dash , who has been a major influence in my life. Melon is the originator of an innovative self-discovery course in swimming and has taught it to more than 6,000 adult students, and counting.

She taught me to forsake the kind of snorkeling that has you dashing about from reef to reef and rock to rock in pursuit of the next aquatic allurement, underwater camera in hand.

She talked about “hovering.”

It’s a matter of finding a suitable spot where the mystical creatures of the sea are likely to congregate – and just floating there, as motionless as you can manage.

Melon says:

"What makes snorkeling most magical – hovering – is the same thing that makes other mindful activities magical: being fully there. In snorkeling, if I stop not just my body but myself, and let moments unfold, out come the creatures, and out pops what's already there that I had missed."

Add to Melon’s counsel the example of my late friend and sailing mentor, Bill McKay, who once described a November day in his tranquil life:

“A beautiful day that will have me oystering, putting up storm windows, bringing in a quarter-cord of firewood, sailing, and then off to dinner at a friend’s house.”

The dead giveaway, I think, is when my kids started teasing me about my compulsion for creating spreadsheets for everything – from my daily task list to my weight, blood pressure, and diet monitoring.

For Father’s Day this month, one of my daughters gave me a mug emblazoned with the words, “I have a spreadsheet for that!”

So, I’m going to try.

I’m going to try to slow down. To move through my day with the same mindfulness I did as a snorkeler – concentrating on the rhythmic coursing of my breath. To cease charging from place to place in search of the perfect something. To stop measuring the time that might be left for me to finish all the projects I’ve listed on the master spreadsheet of my life.

And I’ll try to finally face the fact, as Merton did, that: “The more I go on, the more I realize I don’t know where I am going.”

I, too, am tired of being my own Providence.

Desperately Seeking Peace

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 10:44:27 GMT

Writing poetry to achieve peace.

On Wednesday evening I guided a cross-country Zoom workshop in writing poetry to achieve peace. More than forty people registered, a demonstration of how eager we are to rid ourselves of the increasing emotional trauma of life in the new America.

Academic research into immune system function has found that writing about stressful experiences is a kind of medicine. There’s not only science behind poetry as a way to well-being, but a dose of magic, too.

The event was held under the sponsorship of a religious congregation, the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace. The sisters have developed a speakers’ program exploring how to cultivate peace within ourselves and then bring it to the world. The series is offered at no cost. The Sisters fund their outreach programs through donations.

Each workshop, presentation, and retreat in the series features speakers from different backgrounds who bring insights into what it means to “be peace” in a way that transforms not only our own hearts but also our communities.

The premise of my two-hour program was to show how what I call “healing poetry” can move us toward the kind of peace portrayed in Psalm 131 of the Hebrew Scriptures:

Truly calm and quiet do you make my spirit,

quiet as a fed child in its mother’s arms.

We tend to read poems to console ourselves in times of adversity, I told the group. But it’s not often we write a poem to console ourselves.

Julia Darling, a prolific British novelist, playwright, and poet who was taken by cancer at forty-eight, wrote in her anthology, The Poetry Cure :

“Poetry is essential, not a frill or a nicety. It comes to all of us when we most need it. As soon as we are in any kind of crisis, or anguish, that is when we reach out for poetry, or find ourselves writing a poem for the first time.”

Healing poetry, especially, lets us emerge from what one poet calls the “cave of self.” Writing this kind of poetry gives us somewhere to turn to express openly the emotional wounds we prefer to keep hidden. When we write, we find strength in our own words, which enables us to gain a sense of control over stress and anxiety – a first step on the path to peace.

There is no greater exemplar of this, perhaps, than Wendell Berry, now well into his nineties, and his famous poem, “The Peace Of Wild Things.”

When despair for the world grows in me

and I wake in the night at the least sound

in fear of what my life and children’s lives may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake

rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things

who do not tax their lives with forethought

of grief. I come into the presence of still water.

And I feel above me the day-blind stars

waiting with their light. For a time

I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

As a kid growing up in a gritty New Jersey industrial city, I never could have imagined where life would take me, leading me to suspect that maybe God does, in fact, have a plan for me.

I’m grateful to have found this fourth career – first a journalist, then a corporate executive, then owner of my own communications agency – and now guiding people toward writing poems that help them feel happier and healthier.

It’s my “old man project,” and my most rewarding pursuit. As famed author Thornton Wilder said, seniors need to stave off death through work – even if it’s work that no longer drives a career.

Mostly, I’m just grateful not to be living in The Villages and playing pickleball.

Constant Craving

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 08:21:24 GMT

“Life is just one damn thing after another."

Every time we get our hands on something we’ve been after for some time, the afterglow doesn’t last long. Why? We don’t want just beautiful things, we want beauty itself; we don’t want this or that good thing, we want goodness itself.

Our feelings of satiety and satisfaction evaporate quickly and unfailingly as something else comes along to entice us.

Some say this constant craving of ours for something more is a proof of the existence of God. Why else would we be hard-wired to want something that does not exist?

In short, we crave God. God is our deepest desire.

In light of this, I have to ask myself about my Christian faith.

If I really believed to my core that there is in fact a God, that he cares for me and that I will mesh with the divine after my death, then my days would be flooded with joy, wouldn’t they?

Well, simply put, my days are more often run-of-the-mill. As the old joke goes: “Life is just one damn thing after another . . . then we die.”

By way of illustration, here are lines from “A Litany for Survival” by Audre Lorde:

And when the sun rises we are afraid

it might not remain

when the sun sets we are afraid

it might not rise in the morning

when our stomachs are full we are afraid

of indigestion

when our stomachs are empty we are afraid

we may never eat again

when we are loved we are afraid

love will vanish

when we are alone we are afraid

love will never return

and when we speak we are afraid

our words will not be heard

nor welcomed

but when we are silent

we are still afraid

When we follow the conventional milestones, meting out our lives with birthdays and graduations and anniversaries and funerals, we are left with voids along the way—vast stretches of empty space lost to memory. We take photos only of the high points, not the quotidian.

As I wrote about everyday life in one of my poems:

And I? I’ve sought the space, the place, the lane,

like a student out to master his instrument, and stumbled

upon the novel in the humdrum of the day.

I’m not convinced that I have faith at all. And so my constant craving for more of the world’s comforts.

My fear is that most of us share this lack of conviction. How else explain all of humanity’s striving and seeking and sinning?

Jesus said this on the eve of his crucifixion: “I am not alone, because the Father is with me. I have said this to you so that you may have peace in this world.”

If he is wrong, if there is no divinity, no afterlife, we are the most wretched species on the planet, cursed with the awareness of our mortality for no purpose.

Invisible Man

Fri, 06 Jun 2025 09:00:08 GMT

Does the latest version of me even cast a shadow?

I was in Manhattan last Sunday to attend the Metropolitan Opera production of La Boheme . I walked almost six miles through midtown streets that lovely Spring day, just reveling in the pulse of the city. All the while, I felt invisible.

I’m technically retired. I don’t have “a job.” My material value is no longer recognized by way of formal financial compensation. So I have to validate myself nowadays through more spiritual endeavors, like writing and teaching programs in healing poetry.

Where I was once the youngest in the room, I’m now the oldest. I suspect these are the early steps in my demise.

All the people who mentored me are gone – teachers who guided me toward the pursuit of excellence, and the bosses who evaluated my performance. Friends and colleagues who navigated the currents of life and career with me are no more who were yo. Just last month another friend died, who was younger than I am.

What it’s like to feel invisible?

Women who in bygone days made eye contact with me when we passed on the sidewalk no longer glance in my direction. Of course not – they could pass for my granddaughter. The only ones who acknowledge me are waitresses, who call me “Sweetie.”

When I was forty-one I ran more than twenty-six miles through the five boroughs of New York City. Now I automatically gravitate to the sides of subway stairs so I can grasp the handrails. Grown men defer to me in doorways and call me “Sir.” I assess the flashing “Don’t Walk” countdown to gauge whether I can make it to the other side of the street before the traffic light changes. I keep one eye on the sidewalk in front of me constantly, less my Joe Biden shoes catch a crack.

Yet, all the while, my mind views the world as if I were a twenty-something, eagerly imagining how I’d look in the cool jacket that shop-window mannequin is sporting, or assessing if I can afford a Porshe like the one purring by, or assuming I can walk almost six miles without feeling it the next morning..

If you’re familiar with La Boheme , you might notice the plot has an uncanny resemblance to the cast of Seinfeld – a tight band of young men and a pretty girl.

The men – a poet, a painter, a philosopher, and a musician – are just beginning their careers and trying to make it in their chosen pursuits. Why, at the sunset of my life, was I identifying with these guys last week and not with their elderly landlord?

So that was my Sunday Funday in the city. Fully aware that nobody noticed I was there. Nor did they care one way or another. I felt already forgotten, as surely as if I were sealed away in my cemetery crypt.

This is the latest version of me. An invisible man who wonders if my declining body even casts a shadow on the sunny side of the street.

Wednesday Workshops

Sat, 31 May 2025 09:12:35 GMT

New Zoom workshops in writing healing poetry

For the past three years, I’ve been guiding patients and caregivers in writing poetry to ease the emotional trauma of cancer diagnosis and treatment. Growing out of this work, I’ve launched fee-free Zoom workshops for anyone interested in making use of healing poetry.

This is not so much an “academic” program as a contemplative one. A safe place to share without critique in an encouraging group environment. Not how to write better, but writing to feel better. And, of course, I do this on a volunteer basis.

Last week I held the first of these “healing verses” programs.

How was the initial session? Well, a woman who identified herself as a grandmother wrote what she said was her very first poem. She wasn’t even sure if it could be called a poem.

It was so sweetly compelling and laden with love that I suggested she give it to her children and grandson so they can come back to it again and again to rekindle her memory after she’s gone.

“Yes,” I said, “I would most certainly say it is a poem!”

In my classes at the American Cancer Society’s New York City facility, Hope Lodge, we’ve found that poetry can be easy, beautiful, and uplifting.

I've conducted these sessions at Hope Lodge for the past three years for patients from outside the area who are in Manhattan for treatments at the city’s oncology centers, like Memorial Sloan-Kettering. I’ve also led day-long programs at retreat centers to guide participants in writing poems to ease emotional trauma of every kind: grief, rupture of a relationship, illness, and more.

My approach to healing poetry is based on the proven Expressive Writing protocol developed by Dr. James Pennebaker. At the University of Houston, he demonstrated that self-reflective writing about pent-up emotions can lift their burden, enabling the writers to find strength in their own words and thereby gain a new sense of control.

His methods have been replicated more than two thousand times and have become an academic pursuit in their own right.

The Wednesday Workshops have a one-hour format:

• Reading and discussing a healing poem

• Time for participants to draft their own poem

• An “open mic” period to read their work if they want to

I’ll hold these workshops starting at 7 P.M. every other Wednesday. Participants may invite any family or friends who might benefit from exploring how poetry can smoothen the rough edges of life.

In the first program last week, we looked at how Lebanese-American poet Kahlil Gibran and Langston Hughes, a leader of the Harlem Renaissance, faced up to fear by writing poems.

To join our next session on June 11, all you have to do is click this link , and you’ll find my smiling face. I promise, my workshops won’t be like this:

After English Class

By Jean Little

I used to like “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

I liked the coming darkness,

The jingle of harness bells,

Breaking—and adding to—the stillness,

The gentle drift of the snow . . .

But today, the teacher told us what everything stood for.

The woods, the horse, the miles to go, the sleep—

They all have “hidden meanings.”

It’s grown so complicated now that,

Next time I drive by,

I don’t think I’ll bother to stop.

Examen

peterwyaremko@gmail.com (Peter Yaremko) — Fri, 23 May 2025 20:45:06 GMT

I received word last week that my poem “Examen” will appear in the Spring issue of Time of Singing, A Journal of Christian Poetry. I can’t decide if my ditty is simply a morose self-portrait of a grumpy old man readying to meet his maker – or a surprisingly hopeful entreaty for one more, perhaps final, love.

One thing is sure. My poem was written by a guy who has too much time on his hands, pondering the ravages of age that are manifesting themselves before his eyes.

The Daily Examen is a core practice of the Jesuit religious order. It calls for prayerful reflection on the events of the day in order to detect God’s presence and discern his direction. It’s a technique formulated by St. Ignatius Loyola the founder of the Jesuits, in the sixteenth century.

Here's the poem. It's not the Examen Ignatius had in mind, I know.

Examen

I watch my body deteriorate daily,

my personal slack tide far behind,

that static moment when the body

ebbs and yields to inevitable decline.

My face is yeasty as risen dough, and

flesh slides down to turn my smile to frown.

Knees that jammed my Trek up mountains are

worn and weary. Equilibrium goes rogue, and

I clutch handrails both up and down.

Eyesight disappoints, memory humiliates me

at every turn. And my feet. My feet. Spawn

of an alien strain whose mildewed digits

disgust even veteran mycologists.

A fleshy, fragile creature now, I’m wary of

falling, that unwelcome herald of death spiral.

Where’s the wind that powered me

when I gobbled up 26.2 miles and

left the pack to chase behind? Where’s

the muscled mass of me that moistened

the fair sex by mere presence? Turned to sponge.

Only my soul remains fixed and fresh. And I’m

awake to it. Awake, also, to the expectation of

seeing you soon face to face. Which calms the

night and floods my day with light.

I’m at that awful stage of life when family members and friends are shuffling off one by one into eternity. Like lightning bugs on a June evening, their radiance seems to last just a fleeting moment, then they recede into the dark.

Before the advent of helicopter parenting, we kids were allowed to play outside until it was too dark to see a thrown Spaldeen. We were creative, and made up all sorts of ad hoc games and activities. At least in New Jersey that’s what we did.

When the lightning bugs appeared, we’d catch them in our hands and – using needle and thread supplied by our unknowing mothers – we’d try to string the tortured little wretches into glowing necklaces. We wanted to keep them gleaming forever like living, luminous pearls.

It never worked.

(Image from original oil painting by James Coates.)

WWJD?

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:48:54 GMT

The program was titled Living With Spiritual Integrity in an Age of Fragmentation. We attendees voiced a common goal: to have a day of respite from witnessing the criminal dismantling of everything we hold dear.

Our guide was Mark Kutolowski, the founder and co-director of Metanoia of Vermont. His work there focuses on recovering the Christian contemplative tradition, exploring the role of nature as a path toward deeper union with God, and fostering the connection between prayer and the body.

His counsel to our group at a conference center near Hartford, Connecticut, was simple – pay attention to how Christ modeled a peaceful heart in the midst of chaos.

This was counter-intuitive and difficult for my Type-A personality, which is prone to seizing a problem by the throat and shaking it until it cries “Uncle!”

Remember, Mark noted, there was a reason Christ chose to be born into Roman-dominated Palestine, with all the de-humanizing treatment of the Jewish citizenry by a rapacious occupying force.

To answer the pop-religion question of What Would Jesus Do (WWJD?), Mark traced how Christ did the exact opposite of what I – and you, perhaps – would do.

Christ taught radical love, as in love every person who comes before you. And by the way, pray for the welfare of your enemies. Because that’s what “Love your enemies” means.

Christ preached downward mobility, as in radical detachment.

He urged his followers to accept suffering, as in turn the other cheek.

He demonstrated utter dependence on God, as in trusting that five loaves and two fish would feed five thousand.

Then He took a second look at the thou shall not list that Moses brought down from Mount Horeb. And presented His own list – thou should:

· Embrace being an unimportant person

· Engender gentleness

· Be reconciled to, not resentful of, pain and sorrow that come your way

· Live in alignment with God

· Show active compassion

· Free yourself from earthly comforts

· Nurture a peaceful heart

· Recognize that there will always be a cross to bear

Mark Kutolowski.

If incarnate Christ were with us today, he would do exactly what he did under Roman rule two millennia ago: tend to the suffering, lift the poor, lead by example, denude hypocrisy – all the while rendering to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s. Because there will always be a Caesar for us to contend with.

So how do we anchor ourselves? With an ancient, Christ-like response to divisiveness that answers the cautionary comment of Pope Francis: “The devil, who is the divider, always insinuates suspicions to divide and exclude.”

Will it work? The Roman Empire evaporated, didn’t it?

Christ’s early followers were recognized not by their clothes but by their character:

· Dependence on one another

· Generosity

· Inclusiveness

· Community

· Love

· Detachment

· Authenticity

· Acceptance

· Forgiveness

They were known for their love. They sang for joy as they entered the Roman Colosseum to be murdered.

Onlookers were mystified and attracted. In the face of Roman baseness, pagans craved the joyful tranquility of early Christianity.

It was only after Emperor Constantine legalized it in 313 did hordes of people convert to this new religion – because it was suddenly beneficial to be known as Christian. The clerical robes got frilly, the hats grew ridiculous, and, well, you know the rest of the story.

Today millions of people buy into what the first Christians called The Way` even though they are not members of a Christian faith community.

An example is Tom Krattenmaker, director of communications for Yale Divinity School and an outspoken humanist. He writes:

“I don’t pay attention to Jesus because he’s divine but because I find the teachings attributed to him to be of a very high and enduring quality. Even though no society has ever fully embodied the compassion and care for others exemplified by Jesus, those ideals have never vanished, and they still beckon today whatever our religious or nonreligious persuasions.”

The Report of My Death

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:45:55 GMT

I’ve gotten lots of reactions to my blog last week about death. People asking if my health is okay. Daughter sending me teardrop emojis. A friend writing: “At least your brain appears to still be functioning pretty well.”

It’s understandable. Our entire being is oriented toward preserving our life, and every living creature, from flea to falcon, will fight like crazy to stay alive in the face of death.

But we don’t think or talk about our dying very much. We shun that. We take out a life insurance policy and prepare a will, maybe, and consider ourselves prepared. All of which is foolish.

We all seem to assume we’ll live to 70, 80, 90 or beyond. Most people do not. Yet we are convinced our own death is far, far away in an unknowable future shrouded in mists.

Thomas Merton, the renowned Trappist monk, author, and mystic, wrote this in his journal in March 1966:

“Thinking about life and death – and how impossible it is to grasp the idea that one must die. And what to do to get ready for it! When it comes to setting my house in order, I seem to have no ideas at all.”

Less than three years later Merton would be dead, accidentally electrocuted by a toppled floor fan as he stepped from the shower.

I am already past the average life expectancy for American men. Every day that I continue in this dimension is a cherry on the sundae of my life. But my attitude remains convinced that my passing is far in the future.

My head swirls with projects I want to finish: a novel that’s under way, a memoir in the form of a book-length poem, a volume of my collected haiku.

I want to expand my teaching of poetry as a tool for emotional healing. For almost three years I’ve worked with patients and their caregivers in Manhattan to guide them in writing poetry to address the stresses of cancer treatment.

Last autumn I launched a day-long program at a Connecticut retreat and conference center along the same lines – how to write poetry to alleviate emotional trauma. I will conduct a second program next week.

A group in Washington has booked me to do a program via Zoom this summer about writing poetry to move toward a more peaceful mindset in the face of chaotic current events.

As a result I’ve caught myself negotiating with God. How about “maybe ten more years to finish all this?”

Then what, Peter? You’ll be ready to lie down and breath your last?

On June 1, 1897, the New York Herald reported Mark Twain to be “grievously ill and possibly dying. Worse still, we are told that his brilliant intellect is shattered and that he is sorely in need of money.”

Twain was in London at the time, covering Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee for the New York Journal.

The following day, the Journal skewered the Herald‘s account as false and offered Twain’s denial: “The report of my death was an exaggeration.”

I can relate.

(Image: “Death and Life” by Gustav Klimt, 1910.)

Time to Stop

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:44:55 GMT

Once again we celebrate National Poetry Month during these mellowing days of April. Once again many don’t understand why. Here’s why.

Last week I gathered with twenty people at a Connecticut conference center to guide a day of writing and sharing poetry to heal emotional trauma. Participants came from as far as New Zealand.

They were highly engaged, participated eagerly in writing about and sharing their feelings and experiences, and several acknowledged breakthroughs over emotional issues they’d been struggling with. All done with a lot of laughter.

It was not so much an academic program as a contemplative one. Not a lesson in writing better, but writing to make yourself feel better.

It was the second such program I have led, in addition to the weekly session I offer at the American Cancer Society’s Hope Lodge in New York City. I also hold a Zoom meeting each Thursday evening for cancer patients who can’t travel.

Why? Here’s some of the research into the health benefits of reading and writing poetry:

The Journal of Consciousness Studies says poetry sparks emotional response similar to the way re react to music.

Contemplating a poem’s word pictures and layers of meaning activates some of the same areas that help us interpret everyday reality.

A study by the Max Planck Institute:

Every participant claimed to feel chills at some point when reading poems, and about forty percent showed visible goose bumps.

While listening to poems they found particularly evocative, participants subconsciously anticipated the coming emotional arousal in a way that was neurologically similar to the anticipation of unwrapping a chocolate bar.

A study of hospitalized children finds that providing opportunities for them to read and write poetry reduces fear, sadness, anger, worry, and fatigue.

Beyond the science, what about the art of poetry?

Poetry itself dates back to the Gilgamesh verses of the late second millennium BCE. But the world’s first author is acknowledged to be a Mesopotamian priestess, named Enheduanna, who lived in the twenty-third century BCE. She composed works of literature that included forty-two hymns.

The Torah, written about 1500 BCE, depicts Adam’s first words as poetry:

Here at last the bone of my bones

and flesh of my flesh.

This one shall be called woman,

for she was drawn forth from man.

Poetry is in itself a way of thinking about the world and making sense of it.

Poem comes from the Greek, meaning a “thing made.” A poet was defined as “a maker.”

We “make” a thing out of words, out of language. We write a poem to make a story out of our experiences and feelings.

It’s a way to use words instead of pictures to freeze that fleeting moment in time when the universe causes us to pause in awe.

Poetry, in other words, is a way to stop time.

The terse, three-line haiku form of Japanese poetry arrests incidents that seem to interrupt the flow of time. Like flashes of lightning, haiku dispel darkness for a moment.

For example, the haiku I wrote when I left home to drive to Vermont to experience the eclipse last year. Capturing in poetry the first minutes of an ordinary road trip caused me to put a name on how short our lives on this planet are:

off chasing the sun

final eclipse of my life

all is brevity

Poetry has reverberated down through eons of recorded history because it forces us to notice the little things that help us make sense of the big things.

A great poem, Robert Frost said, ends in a “momentary stay against confusion.”

A momentary stay against confusion. Because a poem, even if it lasts a thousand years, is all about the present – all about time.

Ursula K. Le Guin is known best as a sci-fi novelist. She also wrote eleven books of poetry, including her Hymn to Time:

Time says “Let there be”

every moment and instantly

there is space and the radiance

of each bright galaxy.

And eyes beholding radiance.

And the gnats’ flickering dance.

And the seas’ expanse.

And death, and chance.

Time makes room

for going and coming home

and in time’s womb

begins all ending.

Time is being and being

time, it is all one thing,

the shining, the seeing,

the dark abounding.

People have credited poetry not only with changing their lives, but also saving it. One is Kevin Powers, who wrote in The New York Times how poetry kept him from suicide.

This is the place poetry occupies in our lives. This is what we celebrate this month. And why.

What Is This Thing Called Love?

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:43:08 GMT

I had a friend who thought he’d fallen in love. He told his wife about it, thinking that would be the end of it and he would be on the midnight train to Georgia and a new life with the replacement soulmate. ‘Twas not to be.

The wife wanted to save the marriage and she dragged him to counseling, where my friend was advised that “love is a decision.” The revelation caused him to dump the girlfriend and stick with the wife, to whom he had vowed unceasing fidelity.

Of course, there’s no happy ever-after except in fairy tales, and the wife, rightfully considering herself betrayed, eventually took a lover by way of recompense. Her affair lasted years, unbeknownst to my friend, now a cuckold.

Then there’s the matter of The Reverend Thomas Merton, the celebrity Trappist monk who authored some seventy books of a spiritual/theological/philosophical nature in addition to his memoir, which is still selling in the millions decades after his death.

It seems that monk Merton, who is referred to as a mystic these days, began an affaire de cœur with a student nurse in April 1966 while recovering from back surgery in a Louisville hospital.

The couple’s ardor lasted only a few intense months. Merton says there was no consummation of passion, and he broke it off and recommitted himself to his vows in June 1966.

The reason I bring all this to your attention is not to denigrate the otherwise admirable memory of Merton. Instead, I find myself befuddled.

Why? Because in his journal of April 14,1966, Merton wrote: “One thing has suddenly hit me—that nothing counts except love.”

I wondered why it took this man twenty-five years of eremitical monastic life to reach this conclusion. I assumed that by love he was referring to God, of whom Gospel writer John proclaimed, “God is love.”

Silly me. I hadn’t connected the dots. April 1966 was when Merton’s obsession with his nurse began. Was what “suddenly” hit him in his fifties an infatuation with a woman decades younger than he?

I laid Merton’s experience against my friend’s cuckoldry, and I have come to question if love is, in fact, a decision – or an unintended consequence of the seething sack of chemicals we call our body.

How else to explain the famous, but accurate, reference to “the seven-year itch?”

The phrase can be traced to a 1952 play of the same name. It was popularized by a movie starring Marilyn Monroe.

In a study by Wright State University, an assessment of almost one hundred couples found there were two normal periods of marital decline (measured by passion, satisfaction with the relationship, amount of shared activity, and agreement between the partners).

The research concluded that while the vast majority of marriages begin with a bang – a period of two to three years – this declines as the couple settles into life together.

Not that they’re unhappy. Their hormones are simply regulating as the union becomes routine. This leads to the first period of decline – after about four years of marriage. Another period of decline follows about year eight.

The good news? If a couple survives both of these declines, their risk of divorcing dwindles with every year of marriage after that.

These findings match studies on divorce: most common in the first two years of marriage and again between the fifth and eighth year.

Enough of all this befuddlement. I have to make a decision about what I should believe concerning the nature of love.

I’m going with Eric Fromm’s theory, expounded in his classic work, The Art of Loving . Love is neither feeling nor decision:

“Love isn't something natural. Rather it requires discipline, concentration, patience, faith, and the overcoming of narcissism. It isn't a feeling, it is a practice.”

There. That settles it.

Verses of Peace

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:40:48 GMT

Here’s some news that really isn’t news: a recent national survey by Ohio State University says forty-five percent of us are stressed by news or social media.

Of this number, sixteen percent feel stressed every day . And we’ve slipped to our lowest ranking ever in the World Happiness Report.

So I’m happy to do my part in helping heal this sorry situation by conducting a free Zoom workshop in June – on writing poetry as a tool to cultivate inner peace.

Verses of Peace is one in a series offered by the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Peace. Called Disarming Our Hearts , the series explores how we can cultivate peace within ourselves and bring it into the world.

The series is offered at no cost. The Sisters fund all their programs through donations.

My two-hour Zoom program will be held from 9 P.M to 11 P.M Eastern time on June 18. The primary audience is a gathering in Bellevue, Washington, but the program is open to anybody who’d like to tune in.

This won’t be like the English class you suffered through in high school. I promise. Nor is it an academic seminar that tries to teach you to craft the perfect poem.

Verses of Peace is about feeling better, not writing better – a contemplative opportunity to explore healing poems that are easy-to-understand, beautiful, and uplifting. Our focus is on how famous writers have used poetry to achieve a more peaceful mindset.

We’ll talk about what poetry is all about, and participants will be guided in writing their own healing poems and sharing insights. No prerequisites, no writing experience needed, and no critiques.

Here's what some prior participants have said about my poetry classes:

"I so enjoyed your class last week. I have been writing poems and one haiku. Your class has opened a new world to me, and I'm so appreciative.” -- Mike

“Your classes provided a very positive experience, opening up the possibility of using poetry to deal with the complex emotions felt by cancer patients. I will treasure these memories in the future, and plan to continue on this path of self-discovery and appreciation for everyday life.” -- John

"Thank you for sharing your experience with us and sharing your passion for expressive writing. You have a gift for teaching and getting your point across in a special way.”

-- Martha

Verses of Peace will be a safe space for participants to express their feelings without judgment and find comfort by using words as a path toward peace through the healing energy of poetry.

Here’s the link for more information and to register .

For those of you who don’t know me – or might want to recommend the workshop to your friends who don’t know me – I’m a former journalist, corporate executive, and owner of a corporate communications agency. I’ve authored four non-fiction books and a novel, write poetry that appears in numerous literary magazines, and publish a weekly blog. In conjunction with the American Cancer Society for the past three years, I’ve been teaching patients and caregivers to write poetry to better manage the trauma of a cancer diagnosis, and I lead day-long retreats exploring healing poetry.

My SAD Story

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:38:35 GMT

One road warrior friend developed a fear of flying after giving birth. Another friend who thought nothing of driving from Los Angeles to Las Vegas and back for an evening of craps has come down with agoraphobia. I might be the next to succumb to an adult-onset anxiety disorder.

I’ve noticed that I become housebound too easily, sometimes spending an entire week alone in my apartment – and enjoying it.

I either have a social anxiety disorder (SAD) or I’m an off-the-chart introvert.

People with SAD can display an assortment of symptoms:

· Fearing situations where you don't know other people

· Worrying that you'll be judged

· Fear of being embarrassed or humiliated

· Thinking others will notice your anxiety

· Dreading upcoming social events

This hit home last week as I dined alone over a plate of Spicy Buffalo Tofu at Claire’s Corner Copia, our neighborhood vegetarian bistro. It was Friday evening and the place was boisterous with Yale students exuding springtime joie de vivre .

I was feeling anxious. Ill at ease. Out of place. Worrying I was being observed with curiosity.

As I tucked into my tofu, I performed a mental checklist of social situations that I fear. All of them grow out of my solo life as a single man:

· Eating out

· Shopping

· Vacationing

· Parties of any kind, cocktail to dinner

Where has this come from?

Psychologists tell us social anxiety disorder results from a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Genetic? Yes, that makes sense, because my mother feared everything, down to shunning strange foods – like shrimp.

Among the environmental factors? How about:

· Having an overly critical, controlling, or protective parent

· Being bullied or teased as a child

· Family conflict

· A shy, timid, or withdrawn temperament as a child

Bingo! I plead guilty to all the above.

My mother walked me to and from school until I was in the fourth grade, much to my embarrassment. I was teased and nicknamed for my buck teeth. My father physically abused my mother in front of me. And I definitely was a shy, timid kid.

I thought I had outgrown or resolved all that negativity.

After I left the Catholic seminary as a young man, I found I got along easily with women. Braces took care of my dental malocclusion. And I worked as a newspaper reporter – hardly a job for a shy, timid person.

Throughout my career, I dealt easily with corporate movers and shakers and with famous celebrities, entertainers, and assorted A-listers.

Even today, leading poetry workshops, I can command a roomful of strangers for the entire day – and win a round of applause at the end.

I don’t say all this to toot my own horn, but to explain why I’m baffled that I suddenly feel anxious in many social situations.

My guess is that my wife of fifty years was a buffer of sorts. With her death, I now socially sink or swim on my own.

At my age, I still have a lot of growing up ahead of me.

Julie’s Story

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:36:07 GMT

In honor of Mother's Day, a story about a gift that one mother left to her children.

In 2016 my younger daughter, Julie, celebrated her first birthday since losing her mother to breast cancer. Julie wrote this brief remembrance in her honor, which I posted in 2016. I was struck by the idea that, yes, each of us reaches a point in our lives when no one remains to remember the day we were born—what the weather was like, what time we arrived, what Mom was doing when the birth pangs began. I invite you to recall the story of your own children’s birth and consider leaving them the gift of remembrance that my wife, Jo Anne, bequeathed.

A year ago, Mom called to wish me a happy birthday, as usual.

And she started telling me the story of the day I was born: how she was at Woolworth’s on a beautiful spring-like day (like today), buying buttons for a sweater she had just finished knitting, and felt a little something like she’d need to go to the hospital soon.

She waited for Dad to come home from work, and made all the arrangements for someone to watch Wendy while Dad took her to the hospital. And just a little while later, there I was.

And I started to tease her, telling the story along with her, because she’d told me the same story every year, on my birthday.

Then she told me why she kept telling the story: because when Grandpa had died (many years after Nana), she felt that no one in the world was left to remember the day she was born.

And she wanted me to remember “my story."

I felt about yay-big for teasing . . . because I finally understood why she told the story to me over and over.

Today, I missed hearing my story.

(Top image: Julie and her mom at one of our New Year’s Eve celebrations. Bottom image: The ladies in my life – Julie, Jo Anne, Wendy.)

Burn and Destroy

Thu, 22 May 2025 00:32:33 GMT

When I hear tales like this one from my friend Claudia, I think maybe Elon Musk has a point – fire all the bureaucrats and reset to zero.

Claudia is the founder and chief sudser of Copper Soap Works in Copperopolis, California, located in the Sierra foothills of California. We’ve been pals for going on ten years.

Claudia, whose husband has a hand in sending rockets into space for NASA, sources everything she can locally – from olive oil to goat milk – and hand-crafts her all-natural soaps, candles, and skin-care products from environmentally sustainable ingredients.

My daughters and I buy all her stuff exclusively. And, with her exquisite packaging, they make fabulous gifts.

Then this happened, in Claudia’s own words:

Early in 2023, I opened my inbox to find a nastygram from an East Coast soap company accusing me of infringing on their trademark because my company is named Copper Soap Works. They claimed they had exclusive rights to the name and demanded I “burn and destroy” all my products.

Yes, really. Burn and destroy.

I cried for three days. Then I did what any exhausted, furious soap-maker would do. I lawyered up.

After talking with four or five attorneys, I found my guy—an older, semi-retired trademark attorney who used to handle legal messes for companies like Apple and IBM.

He took over the case. Spoke fluent scary-lawyer. Responded to the threatening company’s legal team with calm, calculated precision. And guess what?

They disappeared. No court. No settlement. Just poof.

Apparently, they thought I’d fold like a cheap bar of dollar-store soap. They were wrong.

But the story doesn’t end there.

Once we’d driven off the legal hyenas, my lawyer said: “Claudia, you have to register your name with the Patent Office so this doesn’t happen again.”

So in January 2023, I filed to trademark Copper Soap Works.

It took a year of waiting. And then, in 2024, they sent me a thirty-page rejection. Their reason? There’s no actual copper in my soap.

They said my name was “ misleading consumers ” and “ making false claims .”

I wanted to scream: “Do y’all even know where Copperopolis is?”

So I appealed. I gave them a list of fifty other businesses in my town that use “Copper” in their names. I explained that it’s a nod to my location, not an ingredient list.

Last September I got my final rejection.

According to the United States Patent Office, “Copper Soap Works implies I manufacture soap made with copper.”

So after investing years of heart, sweat, tears (and legal fees), I had to make the choice: rename my company or risk another legal nightmare down the line.

So here we are. Fig & Grove is the new name and the next chapter, and our grand opening at 49 Cosmic Court in Copperopolis is May 25, from 3 to 7.

Same owner, same recipes, same everything. But now under a name that reflects what we’ve grown into: not just soap, but candles, tallow skincare, body care, and more.

Fig & Grove is a nod to nature. A little earthy, a little elegant. Just like the products I love to make.