I’m going to devote my Saturday blog posts to the topic of A Small, Good Thing, after my favorite Raymond Carver story by that title (you can find the story in Raymond Carver: Collected Stories). I plan on sharing with you some of the small, good things that I come across as I live my days and weeks…and to invite you to do the same.

I have two offerings for you for this week. The first is this tiny, charming, Mary Oliver poem, from her collection entitled The Truro Bear. (So many of you seemed to enjoy the last Mary Oliver poem I posted, about her little dog, Percy).

I’m going to devote my Wednesday blog posts to the topic of What I’ve Been Reading. This is going to be easy because I’m always reading something.

I’ve been reading The Truro Bear, a lovely little collection of poems and essays by Mary Oliver. She writes about her encounters with animals in Truro, MA, a very special place for her (as well as for me!)

I’m going to try devoting my Saturday blog posts to the topic of A Small, Good Thing, after my favorite Raymond Carver story by that title (you can find the story in Raymond Carver: Collected Stories).

I plan on sharing with you some of the small, good things that I come across as I live my days and weeks…and to invite you to do the same.

And my first offering is Carver’s story itself. I read it as a tale of human nature, of the human tendency to fear and hate what we don’t know, and then the relief and solace knowledge provides.

That’s my own take on it; what is yours?

Do you practice mindfulness? I try to live “in the moment” as much as possible, every day. There’s something about focusing on the present that keeps me feeling stronger, more grounded, happier, more able to cope. Yet, a big part of being human involves being aware of the past with all its traumas, and the future with all its worries.

In her memoir, The Next Fifteen Minutes, Kim Kircher presents an intriguing and useful version of mindfulness. Kim is a ski area patroller and emergency medical technician. Part of her training involved learning how to cope with crises fifteen minutes at a time, which strikes me as a perfectly practical “chunk” of mindfulness.

For Mental Health Awareness Day, I’ve picked out five of the most amazingly informative, life-changing mental health books I’ve ever read:

Loneliness; Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection
by John Cacioppo and William Patrick

The Noonday Demon; an Atlas of Depression
by Andrew Solomon

Against Depression
by Peter D. Kramer

Woman; an Intimate Geography
by Natalie Angiers

I send out this poem by John O’Donohue to the couples I know who are suffering, and suggest they keep in mind that Now is not necessarily Forever.

For Love In a Time of Conflict

When the gentleness between you hardens

And you fall out of your belonging with each other.

May the depths you have reached hold you still.

When no true word can be said, or heard,

And you mirror each other in the script of hurt,

When even the silence has become raw and torn,

May you hear again an echo of your first music.

So here’s the kind of nerd I am:

On my way back from the Cape this weekend, I was listening (as I often do!) to a lecture on understanding literature.

The play being analyzed was Oedipus Rex, which is arguably the most important play ever written, not to mention the foundation for much of Freud’s theory.

The brilliant professor who does this particular series, Dr. Arnold Weinstein, has such a soothing, quietly cheerful, clear way of speaking…I find him comforting, almost lulling to listen to, as if, yes, the whole world really does make sense, and if I am patient Arnold Weinstein will gently explain it all to me.