Hot Coffee On A Cold Porch

It was minus 10 degrees this morning. As is our custom, we sat on the front porch with our insulated mugs of steaming Sleepy Monk coffee, all bundled up with multiple layers, fleece blankets, wool beanies and warm gloves.

No one would have blamed us if we had decided to stay inside where it was warm and toasty for our morning ritual of coffee, connection, and a little contemplative reading. It was below zero for crying out loud. But somehow, doing what it takes to preserve and protect that practice, come what may, is worth the effort. For now.

It’s not a rigid, letter-of-the-law rule by which we have to abide, but rather, a choice worth making. For now.

It’s a time together at the beginning of the day that sustains and better equips us for whatever life brings our way. For now.

There’s nothing sacred or magic about coffee on a porch. That is found in the showing up. In the readiness to listen. In the openness to receive. In the possibility of being connected to and changed by something way bigger than two elders who love each other and a good cup of coffee. It just happens to take place, for us, over coffee on a porch.

That’s the ritual that sustains us. For now.

That’s the practice that equips us. For now.

That’s the choice worth making. For now.

What might yours be? For now.

Let There Be Light

This morning as I settled into one of the Adirondack chairs out in front of our house, the sun hadn’t crested the horizon.

Cup of coffee in hand, I waited.

The meadow stretching out in front of me waited too.

Restless, I reached for my phone, and then thought better of it.

The meadow wasn’t restless. It just waited.

And then it happened, as it does every morning. The sun rose above the pine trees behind the house flooding the air with light and spilling across the meadow grasses and wildflowers. And, me.

In dark times we are called to be light in our little corners of the world. To rise above the horizon of another night and spill light across whomever and whatever crosses our path.


A New Start To The Day

The news ain’t great these days.

Most mornings as I wait the recommended four minutes before I can press the coffee, I scan my email inbox. Along with the tantalizing smell of freshly ground coffee brewing, my senses are assaulted with the latest New York Times Breaking News Headlines. While there is the very occasional headline that to my heart constitutes good news—the swearing in of Judge Katanji Brown Jackson—most of the time what I read breaks my heart a little more—the past two weeks have almost put me under—and hope is hard to find.

It’s not a great way to start the day.

So, I changed it.

I unsubscribed to The NY Times newsletter.

I subscribed to Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer’s A Hundred Falling Veils: there’s a poem in every day

This morning I was greeted with my first poem from Rosemerry, about, of all things, hope. (You can find her poem, Longing to Be Seen here)

How we start the day matters. Along with coffee and time with my husband and our dog as the sunlight first hits the meadow, I’m choosing to start my day with poetry, and a little hope.

Maybe you will too.


(Now before you go jumping to any conclusions, it’s not that I don’t want to be informed about the goings on in the world. I am simply choosing not to start my day there. Being part of a well informed citizenry matters to me, and it should matter to you too. Our democracy depends on it. There are good sources of news, as in real information as opposed to opinion and rhetoric out there, and, spoiler alert, they are not found on social media.)