The Dewdrop

Read deep, breathe easy

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My conversation with Chaplain and author Keith Wakefield about his new memoir Stay With Me I Want to Be Alone. Happy to be putting this out just after the book has been announced as a BookLife Prize finalist. Congrats Keith!

Stay With Me, I Want to Be Alone: Keith Wakefield on the Reality of Being a Chaplain

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Objects of Contemplation

Loretta Staples’ series of artworks created during her time living at a Zen center are filled with mysterious resonance and connection to the people and the place around her. Cloud Dragon Sitting I RECENTLY COMPLETED SEVERAL MONTHS as a resident practitioner at San Francisco Zen Center, where I had begun zen practice in the early 1980s. I started renewing my relationship with the temple about…

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About Love

How the countless tiny impressions of family life shape the evolution of love, touch, and communication. BY RANDI MILLER Family I grow up in a quiet house, in a snowy east coast city. There’s no fighting, except my younger brother and I who bicker endlessly anytime we breath the same air. At breakfast, we each sit at the counter on our own stools. The stools are identical—blond wood with flat…

About Love

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The Merlin (Surprised by Joy)

An attempt to rescue a raptor opens the door to the way in which grief and joy are so bewilderingly intertwined in our hearts. BY DEREK FURR AS I WALKED UPTOWN for a break from work, a wren sang, or more accurately, trumpeted. Perched on a service line, his whole body flipped a quarter turn clockwise with each blast, as if Shelley’s skylark were reincarnated on the corner of Warren and Wall in…

The Merlin (Surprised by Joy)

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The Taste of Honey, the Sting of Bees

When a wild honeybee colony claims an empty backyard hive, their arrival could be a divine metaphor for a new relationship—until the silence of the wax moths proves how a story can outpace reality. BY STACEY BALKUN “BABY, COME SEE! Come see!” Morgan called to me from across my backyard. He stood sweating in the shiftless late spring air, his dark hair tied back in a low ponytail, bee after bee…

The Taste of Honey, the Sting of Bees

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Wislawa Szymborska - Conversation with a Stone

“Even sight heightened to become all-seeingwill do you no good without a sense of taking part.”– Wislawa Szymborska Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard Have you ever tried to have a conversation with a stone? How did it go? Is there anything more densely resolute, more coldly mute as a conversation partner than a hard stone? Which is why I find this poem so fascinating, so…

Wislawa Szymborska - Conversation with a Stone

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Elizabeth Bishop - Little Exercise

“Think of the storm roaming the sky uneasilylike a dog looking for a place to sleep in,”– Elizabeth Bishop Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard Elizabeth Bishop wrote ‘Little Exercise’ when she was living in Key West in Florida in the 1930s and 40s, inspired by the uneasy beauty of the area’s tropical storms. Fascinated by the unique geography of the Florida Keys—the shallow waters,…

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"Expanding the Universe" - Rick Rubin on Awareness in Creativity

“The world is the doer and we are the witness. We have little or no control over the content.”– Rick Ruben Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard Rick Ruben is a record producer credited with helping hip hop music go mainstream in the 1980s by working with artists like Run DMC, The Beastie Boys and Public Enemy. In 2023, he released a book called The Creative Act: A Way of Being that…

"Expanding the Universe" - Rick Rubin on Awareness in Creativity

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Home is in a Recipe

Discovering how food transcends nourishment to embody love, memory, and belonging. BY NATHALIE DE LOS SANTOS I CAN STILL SMELL the faint aroma of simmering broth and sweet custard whenever I think of my father, Joe, and the way he transformed our home each time he cooked. Food in our household was the language through which we expressed affection, remembered our roots, and passed on stories of…

Home is in a Recipe

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"One must have a mind of winter/ To regard the frost and the boughs/ Of the pine-trees crusted with snow" - Wallace Stevens, The Snow Man

Wallace Stevens - The Snowman

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Not Done

The hardest battles of cancer often give rise to the most resilience, wisdom and love. BY NOAH LANE BROWNE YOU FEEL THE lump first.  Or maybe I do.  You have just turned forty. “The good thing about breast cancer,” the surgeon said, “is that it’s really common.  We know a lot about it.”  The bad thing about breast cancer is that we don’t know anything about it. We do research, we book…

Not Done

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Becoming Yourself - A Conversation with Jiryu Rutschman-Byler

“The vastness isn’t somewhere else. It’s right here, embodied in the most ordinary activities.” I traveled to Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, near San Francisco, to chat with Jiryu Rutschman-Byler. Jiryu is the abbot of the Zen Center there and he is also the co-editor of the new collection of Shunryu Suzuki’s lectures titled ‘Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life.’ We talked about…

Becoming Yourself - A Conversation with Jiryu Rutschman-Byler

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The Drawer Where I Keep My Doubts

“Some people organize their lives by goals. Others, by memories. I seem to organize mine by unfinished questions—most of them too small for theology and too big for to-do lists.”– Jeff DeGraff Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard “After a lifetime of answers, I find myself returning to my doubts—about the world, about meaning, about myself,” writes the professor, author and essayist…

The Drawer Where I Keep My Doubts

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Mike Travisano - Bob's Tattoos

“He says “Breathe In” reminds him of holding his children as they took their first breaths. He says “Breathe Out” reminds him of holding his mom as she took her last.”– Mike Travisano Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard Mike Travisano is a meditation teacher and a mindfulness coach whose new book, Refuge in Small Things, is packed with poetic musings, Buddhist teachings, fables,…

Mike Travisano - Bob's Tattoos

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Sharing the Feeling: Zen Teacher Shunryu Suzuki on Becoming Ourselves

“Because we have so much useless rubbish in our mind, it is hard to share our feeling with people, with things, with trees, or with mountains. “– Shunryu Suzuki Share using Native toolsShareCopied to clipboard Shunryu Suzuki’s bright, simple, humorous approach to teaching Zen Buddhism might be what has contributed to his continuing popularity as a voice of the tradition, five decades after his…

Sharing the Feeling: Zen Teacher Shunryu Suzuki on Becoming Ourselves

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Andy Chaleff on the Transformative Power of Facing Up to Our Fears

In this episode of the Dewdrop Dialogues, I had the pleasure of speaking with author Andy Chaleff about his latest book, “Dying to Live.” We explored the shadowy and rewarding themes of death and the fear of mortality, discussing how these experiences have shaped our lives. Andy shared personal stories and insights from his journey, and we delved into cultural perspectives on death and the…

Andy Chaleff on the Transformative Power of Facing Up to Our Fears

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The Anatomy of Moments

Hosho McCreesh’s visual, lyrical, haiku-like psalms are strikingly beautiful, and always striving for less. IN MOST OF MY WORK, but most intensely in this new collection, I am forever chasing the moment. Moments are the lifeblood of poetry. They’re striking, even cinematic — stopping us in our tracks, reminding us what poetry is. I often considered how rare the moments were over the 17 years I…

The Anatomy of Moments