Long Sabbaticals Work

The break I took starting in August of 2024 has allowed me to rethink what I want to do with this newsletter, as well as the rest of my life. I’ll bore you with the latter in some other post, but as for this newsletter….

I’m so over deadlines. So this time around, occasional posts. And I’m so over writing long essays. I love reading long-form writing, but I also recognize the effort it takes to produce something worth reading at length. So at this juncture of my life, I’m putting my psychological and emotional energies into slowly becoming an artist—more of that later on.

Still like most of us, I have flashes of insight that come unbidden, glimpses of truths I suspect others might find meaningful. I know how much I appreciate insights from others, especially those who have lived a stretch. I’m in my eighth decade, so I suspect a few things I post will be helpful.

And they will be short, and like proverbs or poems or an incisive quote, I trust they will do their work. I’ll end with an example: During Holy Week, I was struck with the following, which I used as a prayer for our Easter dinner with family and friends:

With towel and basin
he knelt before each of his friends,

And gently caressed the feet of those
who would bolt at the first sight of mortal danger,
and the one who would deny him and deny him and deny him,
and even the one who had already set his heart to hand him over to those who aimed to kill him.

And one by one, he washed them.

And when his body sagged under the unimaginable weight of the world’s sorrows and sin,
he spoke mercy to a criminal who knew what he had done,
and pardon to those who did not know what they were doing.

And for such people, he died
and boldly descended to the blackest depths of human existence
to shed blinding light,
a luminescence that three days later burst out of the cold and silent tomb
and bolted down the road to Galilee,
beckoning us to follow
and tremble at his omnipotent mercy.

Grace and peace,

Mark

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