It all began at Madame Stacy's. I stared at the tarot cards on the makeshift table. They represented the state of affairs in my little world. In the center of the spread was the Hanged Man — my current situation.

One of the most difficult challenges in this being human business is facing what is. This is especially true when what is, sucks. I’m talking about times when life presents you with things you didn’t order and don’t want: like everything in 2020.

I live in Southern Oregon, in the valley where, a few days ago, two towns burned to the ground in one of three wildfires that surround our beautiful valley. It's worse, even, than the fires we had in 2018. Or 2002. And those were dreadful.

“There is a mantra I love that can help enormously with this process we call Life. I saw it written on a whiteboard in a yoga class one day and I have adopted it as one of my Core Principles for Living. Here it is:

As my faithful readers undoubtedly know, I am a porch-sitter. My porch is where I sit and watch the sunrise, express my gratitude, speak my prayers, and think my thoughts.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what to say this month. My mind and heart are troubled by what I see and hear: Division, anger, violence, finger-pointing, hypocrisy, grandstanding, virtue-signaling, and a whole lot of agitated herd behavior. It’s truly disturbing.

One of the more obvious and trying aspects of this pandemic we’re floundering in is all the things we can’t do. This horrid little virus has spurred limitations the likes of which most of us have never seen.

Are you as tired of hearing and reading about this horrid virus as I am? It’s like hearing about the hurricane that’s brewing off-shore: we hear report after report, we prepare, we hoard, we hunker down and we wait and worry and watch the news and wonder if it will really hit, and when, and whether it will hit us, or just those other unfortunate people.

Chinese medicine calls viruses “Pernicious Evil Influences,” which sums it up pretty perfectly. They are all three of those things. But while viruses are nasty, the anxiety they generate is worse … much worse.

For most of my life, I have been a seeker: a seeker of truth, understanding, and also happiness. Seeking understanding and wisdom is honorable enough, but the happiness bit has been somewhat challenging.

On this Valentine's Day, I thought a little education on the heart and on the origin of the holiday might be of interest. An alternative, if you will, to the sentimentality imposed by Hallmark & Florist’s Day, February 14.

A long time ago, just out of graduate school and some 2,500 hours into a five-year process of becoming a counselor, I sat down with my supervisor and announced that, while I enjoyed working with clients, there was something more pulling at me.

I’m not in sync with this Christmas ho-ho. There are reasons. I have issues with the consumer crush. While I enjoy gift-giving as much as the next person and am a big fan of the cute shops in my quaint, historic town, the capitalist push of Christmas leaves me, well, I’d say cold, except that it’s warm.

I know exactly one person who loves getting together with family for the holidays. She tells of wonderful parents and siblings and spouses who actually like one another and who sit around laughing and drinking cider and playing Yahtzee. I don’t buy this story for one minute, but I nod and smile.

Two weeks ago, I was about to get to writing a little something about gratitude for this newsletter when the unexpected randomness of Life happened. My companion, Baci (whom you may recall from his recent celebrity appearance in this column) had a disc rupture, leaving his back legs paralyzed.

A number of years ago I read a little book titled, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. In it, the author tells the story of being struck by a mysterious condition that left her completely incapacitated, unable even to sit up.

I’ve been dealing with some big issues lately, things that hurt my brain and stir my emotional pot; things that if not kept on a tight rein release a toxic tsunami of anxiety. So I picked up Eckhardt Tolle’s A New Earth to try to get some perspective.

Before we zoom over Thanksgiving on our way to Christmas/New Years/Spring Break/Next Summer, I would like to pause to consider the most basic and greatest of gratitudes: that we have the privilege of being here at all.

There's a country song with the catchy little phrase: "When was the last time you did something for the first time?" Those words have (annoyingly) stuck with me because, well, I haven't done very much at all for the first time in a long time. This is not good.

It’s been two months since my last communication and I feel compelled to catch up. A lot has happened, the first and most significant of which affected all of us here on the West Coast. No, I’m not talking about the demoralizing implosion of the San Francisco Giants and the subsequent, equally depressing success of the Dodgers