By Paul Jackson After the pandemic shutdown, I took a walk most days near Sligo Creek Park in Silver Spring, Maryland. In front of a bridge crossing the creek, I could see a quote on the pavement from the @chalkladies, “Keep some room in your heart for the unimaginable.” The line is from Mary Oliver’s…
Reflections on Forgiveness
By Brian Luke Seaward When the phone rings after midnight, the call is rarely about good news. That was when Rose, a good friend of mine, learned that her teenage son, Benjamin, had been killed after his car was hit head-on by a drunk driver. Rose was overwhelmed by shock, pain, and grief, and then…
Reading WINN
By Celia Coates A few people in my family were concerned that I was addled in my thinking and had a foolish view of reality so, one reason I created WINN in 2016 was to set my views before them in a non-argumentative way. I’m not alone in my take on life. And, I believe…
Alan Arkin’s Mind
By Celia Coates March 26th is Alan Arkin’s birthday and this year he will turn 87. It’s a wonderful chance to celebrate the book he published in 2018: OUT OF MY MIND (Not Quite a Memoir). He has lived a life filled with creativity as an actor and director. It is easy to remember the…
A Boffin and Subtle Energies
By Garvin McCurdy I was finishing up the day’s paperwork in the small Reiki office at the Portsmouth Regional Hospital when the phone rang. It was from the Ob/Gyn unit on the top floor (the happy floor where new people still arrive) and the Pediatrics unit which had recently been moved up there. They had…
About Empathy
By Celia Coates Recently, “empathy” has often been in the news. In the January 19th Washington Post, Katherine Ellison wrote, “… scientists churn out volumes of work on the subject, with more than 2,000 scientific papers published in 2019 alone. For all its popularity, empathy isn’t nearly as simple as so many blogs and books…
Still the Mind, Fill the Heart
By Brian Luke Seaward You must remain very still to get a hummingbird to perch on your hand as you hold a small bowl of sweet nectar in your palm. The slightest movement signals these tiny birds that it is not safe to land, let alone feed. Last summer I taught my wife’s grandson how…
“We Are All Connected”?
By Celia Coates This week in America, when we are more openly and ferociously divided than we have been in many decades, the idea that we are all connected can seem ridiculous. Still, it is an idea that goes back 3000 years or more to the earliest Vedic teachings in India, and it can be…
Gifts for a New Year
By Celia Coates I had been wondering how to begin this new year in WINN, a year that everyone is hoping will be better than the dark and troubled year just past. Then, within days of each other, two gifts arrived – first, a photograph that my sister, Judith Sellers, had taken in her garden…
Giving and Getting
By Celia Coates Many years ago, when I was young and had not been going to school in America for very long, I was surprised that after the Christmas vacation the question that kids asked each other was, “What did you get?” I didn’t really know what to answer. There had been nuts and candies…
The Present Moment
By Celia Coates Having to go to the bank in these pandemic times means finding a drive-through teller. I sat in my car after I had sent in my documents using that pneumatic canister that reminds me of the way money was moved overhead from counter to cashier in department stores long-ago. It was a…
Authenticity
By Ann Allen “This other work you’re doing is just too unusual. People aren’t ready for it. Doctors aren’t ready. If they know you’re doing it, we’re worried they won’t refer patients to any of us. Unless you stop doing it, we’ll have to ask you to leave the group.” I stared back in disbelief…