The Athlete Way

Dear Rachel, I hope you play better today. But I hope more that you enjoy your play today. This might upset you but I was never really into winning or losing. I always loved just watching you play - when you were just playing the game and using your own abilities. And when the object of the game is to get the ball into the goal, and you play just to get it in goal, not to add up a score but to get it into the goal. I loved the goals they always give me chills simply because it is the object of the game - not because it makes you win. And then when you are playing to keep the goals from the other team, and you just block them because it is the object of the game not so they do not get points, or so you don't lose, but you play just to keep it out simply because that is the object of the game. I love that too. What I took from today was pretty simple - half the battle is your presence and your voice - you touch the ball, on a good day, for about a minute during a 70...

I’m not going to be the hero you read about in books. I’m not that type of hero. I am a weaver. I weave seemingly random moments into a tapestry of words that come together to form a message that connects the outwardly disparate, distinct threads of my life. I merge bold obnoxious hues of green, red, and orange, with soft pastels of pink, yellow, purple, and blue. That is my craft, my gift. I connect things, subtly, invisibly, patiently, into an intelligible whole. The other day I went to community mediation with a friend. The teacher spoke of the Zen Buddhist tradition of koans, and I came to understand them as being a bit like Jesus’ parables, paradoxical anecdotes used to demonstrate the inadequacy of logical reasoning to arouse enlightenment. I left the meditation with the sense that my gift, like my life, was remarkably similar to this notion of koans. It doesn’t make sense. It’s an answerless riddle, whose truth, invisible to the eye, is discernable only to the heart. ...