5th century Chinese poet T’ao Ch’ien said, “a thousand years may be beyond me / but I can turn this morning into forever.” I find that to be really lovely. And true. Yesterday my daughter turned 9, and It has me musing on time. The swiftness and dawdling of time. When a year is marked or a height is measured and dated on a doorway, I fall prey to predatory thief of time. I look around saying – now, where did it go? As if time were a misplaced set of keys. Time, of course, is socially constructed to make …
Author: Swanson
Reduced to the Scale of Our Competence
I am going to begin with a definition. Imposter Syndrome: the persistent inability to believe that one’s success is deserved or has been legitimately achieved as a result of one’s own efforts or skills. How many of you have experienced “imposter syndrome” in some area of life? show of hands. Good. There are multiple takes on imposter syndrome. Today I want to lean on its value for spiritual practice. Imposter syndrome is when you don’t believe your success is deserved, achieved, or the result of your effort. Good. Its not. Our effort is showing up and having it be done …
Eat the Wild Thing
Maurice Sendak who wrote Where the Wild Things Are used to receive truckloads of letters from kids about that book, but he said his favorite was from a mother. It went like this….Dear Mr. Sendak, my 6-year old son, wrote you a letter and you wrote back with a drawing of one of your wild things. When he received the drawing of the wild thing, he loved it so much he ate it. Sendak said that was one of the highest compliments he’d ever received. The boy didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He …