40 minutes of sitting
Sat for 40 minutes this morning. The breath keeps returning. The mind keeps leaving. There is no winning, only coming back.
The Commons
Public reflection, unhurried.
Chronological. No algorithm. No trending. Read slowly.
The Examen, as I actually do it
Ignatian prayer has a 500-year-old practice called the Examen. I was taught it at twenty-three and spent two decades doing it wrong — which is to say, doing it as an itemized audit of my sins.
Here is how I do it now, b...
Letters I never send
Once a month, on the new moon — which I did not learn from my tradition, and which I still feel a little silly doing — I write a letter to someone who hurt me in the old house.
I write the whole thing. Everything. Then...