Tag Archives: impermanence

Why Love What You Will Lose?

Tricycle’s online magazine offers a provocative article which discusses two key questions: Why love what you will lose? and What else is there to love?

Below is a highlight from this worthy article. To read the entire article see the link at the bottom of this post.

Suffering is, strangely, both sickness and medicine, impossible to tease apart in the end. … That we suffer and share this great fact of impermanence together is profound medicine in itself, a medicine that releases compassion, love, connectedness, and forgiveness as the healing source.

Why Love What You Will Lose?

Memoir Analysis #2: Bill Bryson

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One way to determine if a memoir is ready for publication is to compare it to others that have already been proven successful. Continuing to aim very high, the second author and book selected for analysis is the 2006 book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. Here are a few quick observations:

this New York Times Bestseller is a “mix of exquisite detail and inspired exaggeration (which) all add up to the Truth with a capital T that rhymes with G that stands for out-loud guffaws” as reported by Scott Simon for NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday,
it has approximately 81k words spread over 15 chapters, and
“The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid is steeped in … the sweet, simple pleasures of an all-American boyhood. Even the world-weariest of souls will be charmed.” Parade

While Bryson and Sedaris may be contemporaries in time and country, their memoirs are worlds apart and inspired by worlds that no longer exist.

Six more successful memoirs will be reviewed in the weeks to come. Please let me know what your thoughts are on memoirs in general and what makes them worth reading for you.

Slow but sure, Patrick Cole

Dead Tree

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I feel like a dead tree

No branches, no bark

Missing my top half

Still standing but could probably be easily pushed over

Fortunately

Those who would be happy to topple me

Pull me up by my roots

Are no longer alive or

No longer capable

I’m not the last man standing

Nor the last tree standing

But I’m still standing

If only for today

Feb 26 – This First Sunday of Lent

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It’s been many years since I attended parochial school or celebrated Lent for that matter. However, this year I have a poem to share that uses the word lent in perhaps a different way. May this Lent be a time of good reflection for all of us regardless of our faith tradition.

What We Are Lent

sometimes we think too much

sometimes not enough

sometimes it’s time to pause and breathe

I think that’s the “right stuff”

or is it right view, right action

or right effort

whatever it is

let’s recognize the common hurt

then embrace and smile

and enjoy this moment

it’s a short ride after all

and life is what we are lent

Life Matters

CHOOSE LOVE

Tag Archives: impermanence

Why Love What You Will Lose?

Memoir Analysis #2: Bill Bryson

Dead Tree

Feb 26 – This First Sunday of Lent