One day this past week, as I sat with a cup of tea in my morning meditation, I became aware of steady and unhurried rain on the kitchen roof. I watched the yard through the patio doors, taking in the scene. The grass had turned that deep May green. The trees were coming toward their fullness. The sky was dark where, on another day, it would be bright. The whole scene had a density to it, as if nature had drawn closer to our home. Recently, I have found myself returning, in a

This morning I was taken by the freshness of a late April morning. The mourning doves called. Chickadees chattered in the trees. A tufted titmouse sang from somewhere I could not see. The grass was wet with dew. The pugs snuffled in the rhododendrons. The sky was bright with the new sun. T. S. Eliot called April, “the cruellest month.” In upstate New York, April is a bridge month. There is the freshness of spring, and there is still the possibility of unexpected chill. Our ma

Students often ask me, “Do you believe in the existence of G*d?” Sometimes the question is sincere and searching. Sometimes it comes with a sharper edge, as though they are trying to work out whether I can be trusted before they have even heard me teach. That is understandable. Some students arrive already wary of professors, having been warned by conservative religious parents or pastors that people like me are hostile to faith. In such cases, the question is doing more than

Forty-three years ago I came to the realization that I was a pacifist. That realization came during a recruitment week for British Army chaplains at Bagshot Park in Surrey, then the home of the Royal Army Chaplains’ Department. I want to say clearly that I did not arrive at that realization from a place of hostility toward chaplains. Quite the opposite. I was deeply sympathetic to the work I saw they did. I was especially moved by those who had served as chaplains in the Falk

It has been a brutal winter but we enjoyed a few warm days. Last week, Jane and I found ourselves outside in short sleeves. The media called it a “false spring.” We prefer to call it a foretaste of spring. The snowdrops are already out. Perennials are beginning to push through the soil. Buds that have been forming quietly all winter are becoming visible. Even the rhododendron leaves that curled downward against the cold have lifted again toward the light. The days are getting

Almost a year ago when a massive tree fell on our kitchen and crashed through the roof, it split beams, smashed chairs and scarred the old pine farmhouse table. That table had stood at the center of our home for nearly thirty years. It had witnessed meals and conversations, laughter and sadness, emails and books written, and prayers said. It was never just furniture. It had been a quiet companion to our life. If that old table could speak … When the kitchen was finally rebuil

I have been writing in journals on and off since the early 1980s. It has not been continuous. There have been long stretches when I have not written at all. Yet I always seem to return to it. I drift away and come back. Over the years I have tried different methods. Different diary systems. Even digital journals. I suppose this biweekly blog is a kind of journal, though it is always digital. Yet over time one thing keeps reasserting itself. I return to analog. Paper. Pencils.

People often think of Tai Chi as a gentle form of exercise. It can certainly be that. Yet it is better understood as a whole practice in which movement, attention, and breathing are trained together. Developed in China as a martial art, it is rooted in classical Chinese cosmology and medicine, drawing on ideas of yin and yang, balance, and the circulation of vital energy. These ideas were never abstract theories but ways of describing how human beings participate in the large

Before anything else, philosophy is simply the habit of asking basic questions and refusing to leave them unexamined. What is real? What can I know? What matters? How should I live? These are not technical problems. They are the questions that sit quietly beneath ordinary decisions. Philosophy begins when one takes them seriously and is willing to test one’s own assumptions. Traditionally, philosophers have grouped these questions under a few headings. Metaphysics asks about

Not every struggle is a psychological disorder. Sometimes the issue is not pathology but perplexity. A person feels unsettled, misaligned, uncertain. The questions are philosophical: What matters? What kind of life am I trying to live? What do I owe others? What do I owe myself? Philosophical counseling offers a structured conversation about such questions. It is not therapy. It is not treatment. It is disciplined dialogue. The work begins wherever the concern lies—a career d