The Voice That Was Never On Your Side

The first time I heard the song "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," tears sprang to my eyes before I even understood why.  An ache opened up in my chest, and I immediately felt guilty. I was about nine years old, and my mother was not absent. She was right there, trudging up and down stairs with endless loads of laundry, making school lunches, managing the relentless physical machinery of a household full of eight children. By any reasonable measure, she was working herself to the bone for us. Read more...

The Language of Nurturing

The first time I heard the song "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child," tears sprang to my eyes before I even understood why.  An ache opened up in my chest, and I immediately felt guilty. I was about nine years old, and my mother was not absent. She was right there, trudging up and down stairs with endless loads of laundry, making school lunches, managing the relentless physical machinery of a household full of eight children. By any reasonable measure, she was working herself to the bone for us. Read more...

What Punishment Has Never Once Done

Fifty years ago, in the spring of 1976, I auditioned in New York City for a dream job. If I got it, I would spend the entire summer at Disneyland in California, singing in their Bicentennial show and parade. I didn’t have any sheet music, but I wanted it so much, I convinced a friend to cut class and go to New York with me as my accompanist. Thousands of performers showed up to the open call. Read more...

What’s Right Vs. What’s Real

There’s a conversation so many of us find ourselves having these days. Sometimes it’s with a friend over coffee. Sometimes it’s at three in the morning with ourselves. How do we navigate a world changing this quickly? How do we “be with” the pain erupting in unfathomable ways, in our country and around the globe, without being consumed by it? How do we honor the deep sense of loss and disorientation as cultural norms dissolve beneath our feet, while feeding a genuine hope for a new world that is unfolding? Read more...

Everything Is An Invitation

There’s a conversation so many of us find ourselves having these days. Sometimes it’s with a friend over coffee. Sometimes it’s at three in the morning with ourselves. How do we navigate a world changing this quickly? How do we “be with” the pain erupting in unfathomable ways, in our country and around the globe, without being consumed by it? How do we honor the deep sense of loss and disorientation as cultural norms dissolve beneath our feet, while feeding a genuine hope for a new world that is unfolding? Read more...