You swipe through your favourite news site while sitting in a train, and you enter the typical bombardment of information. Can you feel the contraction of your chest, the narrowing down of your attention, the closing of your heart?
I like to consider myself a helper, but when our son, Jon, took his life on Easter weekend of 2019, I could no longer think of myself as a successful helper. In my own eyes, I instantly became a failed one.
May I begin my hopeful essay with negatives? We can’t ignore their reality. Can we just get them out of the way? We all know them.
Or do we?
We know about the bees and the bugs.
In my retirement, I am engaged in bee conservation. Unheralded in the [...]
At such a time, are the arts irrelevant, a luxury? To the contrary, they have an essential place both in grieving for what is lost and in imagining new human possibilities.