Life Challenges
Reflections and poetry inspired by life’s many challenges with some articles about how to navigate through difficulties with hope and grace.
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Illness as a Spiritual Practice
Illness as a spiritual practice? I would rather not think so... I’ve written a number of reflections over the years about spiritual practice as it appears in daily…
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Learning to Live at Sixty – A Reflection on Aging
Aging alone, I was sitting in a wheelchair on the 4th floor of a busy rehab hospital—five hundred miles from home—on my 60th birthday. Not even a simple…
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Dekker’s Thoughts About Legacy
Woof woof… it’s me, Dekker. I’m lying here in my favorite sunspot while my person taps on her keyboard about something called legacy...and I wonder...
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December Declutter
I’ve never been one for jingle bells and reindeer in December. In fact the closest I have come to a reindeer was an old workhorse that belonged to…
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Dekker, On Wisdom, Worry and The Weight of the World
Maybe it’s the season of “too”: too much news, too many expectations, too many lists. Or maybe it’s that time feels heavier when the light fades early. Whatever…
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What Remains After Loss
I’ve come to see that loss, in all its forms, doesn’t take everything. It pares life down to its essence, yes—but what remains can be astonishingly strong.
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When Nothing Goes Right – Add Fertilizer
Have you ever had one of those days when nothing seems to go right? A tech glitch eats half your document, a bill arrives that you know you…
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Bridging Generations with Legacy
What We Teach Each Other is Our legacy. When I was a child, I thought adults knew everything. Why would they be put in charge of so much…
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Whose Footsteps Do We Remember
Suppose for a moment that the ground beneath us remembers. That every footstep leaves not just an imprint in the soil but a whisper in time.
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Wisdom from Dekker
As I, Dekker the seasonal observer, lie by the fireplace (yes, I scoot closer than I’m supposed to), I’ve been noticing a change in the house.
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Loneliness and Aging
Loneliness often accompanies aging for many people. Growing older has felt to me like a rehearsal in small abandonments. A good friend moves away. A neighbor dies...
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The Body Remembers
Suppose for a moment that our aging bodies carried not only scars and wrinkles of the years gone by, but also every dream we once dreamed…
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Journaling as a Path
Journaling can be a wonderful path to increased inner health, a way to be heard, a way to forgiveness for yourself and others, or a road out of…
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Wisdom from Dekker in Autumn
As I, Dekker the observer, lie with my nose near the door and my paws outstretched like a proper gentleman, I can tell… something is changing. The air…
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Memory as Both Gift and Grief
Have you ever tried to recall a story only to find the edges blurred, the details slipping away? You can almost see the scene, almost hear the voices,…