The 60-Second Sabbath

Loss

  • Autumn in the Garden of Eden

    As winter approaches the Garden of Eden,autumn's cleansing handstrips bare the branchesof the tree of knowledge of good and evil. What, then, is left to know? Stare up through the black, beseeching limbsto the infinity of stars beyond. Text and… Continue reading

  • Night Will Blossom

    We all grow old. You are older today than yesterday. This is as true for me (at 57) as for the toddler, the teen, the twenty-something. We grow old. I'm not afraid of this. I may have been once (and… Continue reading

  • Fearful Questions

    The trick, in uncertain times, is not to let your decisions be ruled by questions that arise from fear. As Thomas Merton points out, "A huge network of anxious questions surrounds us and begins to guide many, if not most… Continue reading

  • God Talking

    Yesterday morning, five of the eight people with whom I work were told that their positions were being eliminated. Two will be gone by the end of the year, the other three at the end of March. All were then… Continue reading

  • For My Books

    The spine of the book must be brokento be open to be usefulto be full. Preserved, pristine,shelved, admired,untouched, unsoiled,this is embarrassement.These are the volumes pointless and sad. Bent edges, torn pages, brown stains, stuck leaves–all this is yes.I've done something,… Continue reading

  • Falling Apart, Coming Back Together

    Disintegration leads to reintegration. Loss of the "I" (the ego, the self) leads to fuller integration into the greater "I" (which is ultimately union with all, with the divine, with God). This is the pattern of life, repeated daily, even… Continue reading

  • Desolation/Consolation

    Desolation and consolation: we cycle through both of these, constantly, endlessly. This is a part of being human. How does God experience this cycle? Is there also an ongoing divine wheel of loss and rebirth, dissolution and reintegration? Would this… Continue reading

  • The Garden of Pain

    Poet and author John O'Donahue describes our suffering as time in the "garden of pain," a place in which our time is "not wasted or for naught." This interior space of pain is not the wasteland we typically imagine, not… Continue reading

  • What I Hold

    What I hold that is not mine, spoils. Text and image © 2010 by Dirk deVries. All rights reserved. Continue reading

  • When Someone You Love Is Gone

    When someone you love is gone, either because of the loss of relationship, distance or death, all of what was between you and that person (or other being, like a pet) has no place to go–the affection, for example, or… Continue reading