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Breathe In Peace, Breathe Out Love: Everyday Magic, Day 1008

June 2, 2020

I thought a global pandemic was enough: enough pain, suffering, fear, restriction, uncertainty, and dread. Turns out I was wrong. We now have violent riots (most of which, from all I’m reading in the news and hearing from eye witnesses, seem fueled by outside forces bent on division and hatred) topping off hundreds of peaceful

The Peonies Where a Tornado, Cancer Diagnosis, and Pandemic Meet: Everyday Magic, Day 1007

May 24, 2020

As I watch the Pendleton’s peonies I just bought rush from tight little balls to full-throttle fireworks of blossoms, I keep thinking of three impossible things: the massive tornado that tunneled through our area last May 28th, my eye cancer diagnosis right before the tornado, and the pandemic that ups the ante on anxiety and

The Brave Voice of the Iris: Everyday Magic, Day 1006

May 15, 2020

The irises are falling all over themselves with the weight of their beauty. It’s banner year where they’ve gone beyond simply showing off to flinging their gorgeousness at us with IMAX screen intensity. For the last 15 years, I’ve cut and bundled them carefully in a cacophony of vases in a large box. Then I

Cancer Anniversary: From a Personal Pandemic to a Global One: Everyday Magic, Day 1005

April 30, 2020

A year ago today, pacing an empty parking lot, I cried so hard on the phone with my friend Kelley that it was hard to get the words out: “I have cancer. In my eye. I’m so scared.” Ken was racing back from Topeka to meet me after my two hours of scans at the

A Letter From the Post-Pandemic Future: Everyday Magic, Day 1004

April 19, 2020

Dear You, Yes, I hear you knocking on my door at all hours of the day and especially night, calling me out of my sleep because you’re not getting enough of your own. You want to know what will be, how it will happen, and especially when. Fair enough questions given that you’re human, and

If God Didn't Want Us to Pray at Home, She Wouldn't Have Invented Zoom: Everyday Magic, Day 1003

April 11, 2020

Or Facebook Live. Or Youtube. Or any number of places to help us worship together while keeping physically apart and spiritually close. A church in Lawrence is doing by having people drive to their parking lot to watch a minister leading them while listening to the service on a radio station. The Kansas Zen Center

The Night John Prine Died: Everyday Magic, Day 1002

April 8, 2020

The Night John Prine Died The pink full moon rose over the pandemic singing through the tree, “Hello in there. Hello.” We listened, all children grown old, but always looking for something to hold onto, even angels of the old rivers of our heart’s journeys, grown wilder in their holiness, forcing new

Walking With Courage, Vulnerability, and Tenderness: Everyday Magic, Day 1,001

March 31, 2020

Amazingly enough, we are arrived at the last day of March, a month that has lasted at least 1,283 days in fear, panic, and dread years. But here we are, and as April — what T.S. once called the cruelest month — approaches, we know we’re in for a far longer, harder, and more unimaginable

Listening to History, Looking Out for the Herd: Everyday Magic, Day 1000

March 19, 2020

It only took a few seconds of looking at the NYTimes map of the pandemic Saturday night for me to start hyper-ventilating and crying. At that moment, I didn’t yet realize I needed perspective, big-picture, deep-time, and wide-angle views to not just calm myself at the moment, but forge a more informed path forward. After

Dear Me: Stop Freaking Out: Everyday Magic, Day 999

March 12, 2020

Dear Me (and Dear Me!), I know you’re crazy-scared about the coronavirus. How could anyone paying attention not be when the closings and cancellations fall like dominos. Just in the last day, many universities in your state cancelled in-person classes, events on your calendar vanished in a wisp of precaution, and your synagogue called off

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

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