Mark's Blog
The Tension Between Personal, Private and Public
Is it personal, or is it private? That is an important distinction, which I remember being carefully outlined in the community organizing training I received over thirty years ago. It was suggested that we can freely, or at least carefully, share personal information...
Trust and Mistrust
There is an old story about a Maine farmer who gets up before dawn, as he did every day, to walk over to the barn to milk his cows. As he returns to the house, the dawn breaks in full glory — casting its incandescent beauty over the fields and the distant forest. As...
Don’t Make Me Come Down There: A Statement of Fear, Not of Faith
God spoke: “Don’t make me come down there!”—or so said the billboard at the entrance to the Lincoln Tunnel, which connects New Jersey to New York City. This quotation can be found on church signs, billboards, and media posts all across the country. The implication is...
Fish Eyes: Seeing the Whole Field
Happomoku is a Japanese word meaning fisheyes. Happomoku was a regular part of practice in the martial art I studied while living in Japan after college. Two people would stand facing one another and look at the other person’s face and at the same time pay attention...
The Hospitality of Creation
The mountain commands attention – for miles around. Mount Monadnock is the signature peak in southern New Hampshire. Its craggy top is a magnet for photographers and hikers (for years I was told that it was the second most climbed mountain the world, after Mt....
The Tyranny of Needing to Be Right
Last week I participated in a group debate on Zoom sponsored by Braver Angels, a national movement/organization committed to depolarizing America. The debate topic was: “guns make people safer”. I spent my three minutes talking about fear; that we all are afraid –...
Finding the Center at the Edge, and the Edge at the Center
When I lived in Japan for two years after college, I became a serious student of Zen Buddhism. I studied, I practiced sitting zazen, I learned a martial art. At one point I thought I would become a Buddhist, but an odd and unexpected thing happened: the more I...
Resentment, Lament, and Love
The litany grows longer and more gut churning and heart wrenching by the day: Mass shootings (the Washington Post reports nearly 300 since January 1); Supreme Court decisions that leave millions of people reeling and afraid; Challenges around race and books and...
Declaration of Independence and the Ten Commandments
“When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with one another…” Thus begins the Declaration of Independence, issued on July 4, 1776, which we commemorate today with fireworks,...