We human beings search for patterns. We look for them in the weather, in the habits of those around us, in the lives of other creatures and in our own. We especially search for patterns in tragedies. We don’t want to believe that horrible events could happen at random to anyone, let alone to us…
I stand in the doorway between two rooms: one dark, one full of light. I know which one calls me, but I cannot pass through. I believe I am ready for the brightness, but is there something I must still do to prepare? March is that doorway, that space in between, neither barren winter nor…
This essay was also published in the local Oak Park newspaper Wednesday Journal. Two recent incidents at Oak Park River Forest High School have caused many parents and community members to react with alarm. Several weeks ago, there was a fight between a group of students in the lunchroom. And this past week, a student…
Recently, I woke from a dream. I was a young man, maybe in my early twenties, hanging out at a restaurant with a group of friends, talking and laughing. The woman who is now my wife was with me, and she was young as well – we are about the same age. In the dream,…
Winter can brutalize. Winter can sensitize. Winter can prioritize. Winter can fill our eyes with stinging tears of loss and regret and sadness. As we tilt away from the sun, a chill fills the air around us And it seems the end of something. But what is the end if not the beginning Of whatever…
I stand in the midst of a snowy wood, heavy flakes falling gently around me. I feel the swirl of a cool breeze against my cheek, and I close my eyes. When I open them, an old man in a black overcoat, long gray beard streaming over his chest, appears before me. He beckons me…
The Earth is a regenerative system. It reproduces what it needs to survive on a timescale of billions of years. And for most of humanity's existence, humans have lived within Earth's regenerative cycles. Over the past millennium, we have more and more rapidly broken from those cycles, taking the planet’s resources, converting them to products…
It is our insistence on civility that fractures our nation, not our desire to speak truthfully. It is the extralegal killing of Black men by police that fractures our nation, not the protests in response. It is our insistence on funding our schools through property taxes that fractures our nation, not teaching the true history…
The coronavirus pandemic is a cruel teacher and we are its stubborn, unmotivated students. The pandemic taught us lessons; when we didn’t learn, it simply taught its lessons again. The virus itself has the simple aim of reproducing itself, but the disease interacts with our society in a way that highlights our glaring deficiencies. Its…
One year ago, an armed force overwhelmed police, stormed the US Capitol, and threatened the lives of US Senators, Representatives, and the Vice President. They tried to stop the certification of electoral votes through an insurrection targeting the United States government. They did this because they believed the lie that Joe Biden had lost and…
Entwining 