Light with Spirit

This site

is about words, about writing. And about weaving our spirituality into our lives, about not making a compartment for church or prayer or spiritual pursuits, but instead making that part of ourselves the core of our everyday lives.

I hope that people read and find something uplifting, cheering, comforting or challenging in what they read here. I share art that moves me or inspires me; books that I've enjoyed or found useful, helpful or inspiring; quotations that have the ring of truth and integrity, challenge or comfort, or sometimes just make me laugh. This is all part of my purpose, which is to meet people by breaking through the artificial barriers we put up, so that we can interact from our Spirits.

As a writer I work from my heart, my soul, my experience, my imagination. My relationships with people, reading, assimilated facts and ideas and, most reliably, the intangible that every creative person knows but can’t quantify or describe –inspiration-- all come into play when I write stories. My objective for this web site is to share, pure and simple.

Berkeley, Home of the Free Speech Movement, 1966. The sun is shining, as it shines only in California, only in Indian summer— blisteringly hot and watery pale at the same time.

An intense, quiet man and his daughter, so very like him, sit on a bench in the courtyard of a dormitory complex. He has brought her to the university. They delivered her belongings to her room, had lunch at Larry Blake’s, a well known student hang-out, and took a walk around campus. Now it’s time for him to go home.

She has been eager for this moment since long before her admission letter arrived last January. Her father, on the other hand, is concerned that this is too big a leap for her, from a graduating class of ninety-six students at Colfax High School to the University of California, with a student population of 29,000. As they sit silently, she senses every unspoken thought in her father's mind. She sits there, knowing how hard this is for him. But he has to leave sometime.

Finally, she asks, "Don't you have anything to say to me?"

He looks her right in the eye and says, "If I haven't taught you what you need to know by now, it's too late."

They stand up, they hug, and he walks away. She knows –she knows– that he will weep as soon as he’s out of sight. But she feels liberated. Elated.

Only now, writing this, she weeps at that good-bye.