a radio was on.

I was talking about compassion with my friend, Alison earlier tonight in the little window in her life between the moment she puts her young children down to sleep and the moment she herself falls into bed, exhausted.  When I say talking, I mean texting.  Alison and I are in one giant, years long texting conversation that never breaks off.  I kid you not. I am sure if we subpoenaed the records from Verizon (it's not that we committed any crimes--I just can't shake the former litigation associate tendency to think of everything in terms of discovery, and if you don't know what I mean by that, you're lucky), you would find a kind of epistolary novel about two dear friends ruminating over just everything--through divorces and marriages and child birth and job losses and toilet training and kids off to college and then finally, last year, my cancer--our text messages are witty and exhausted and loving and cranky--like the two of us together. I love texting, I'll freely ...

I was talking about compassion with my friend, Alison earlier tonight in the little window in her life between the moment she puts her young children down to sleep and the moment she herself falls into bed, exhausted.  When I say talking, I mean texting.  Alison and I are in one giant, years long texting conversation that never breaks off.  I kid you not. I am sure if we subpoenaed the records from Verizon (it's not that we committed any crimes--I just can't shake the former litigation associate tendency to think of everything in terms of discovery, and if you don't know what I mean by that, you're lucky), you would find a kind of epistolary novel about two dear friends ruminating over just everything--through divorces and marriages and child birth and job losses and toilet training and kids off to college and then finally, last year, my cancer--our text messages are witty and exhausted and loving and cranky--like the two of us together. I love texting, I'll freel...

Lord, You searched me and You know. These words begin Psalm 139, considered one of the most introspective in the canonical collection.  This beautiful, beautiful poem reaches across centuries--imagine them unrolling, the dating of the psalms is a fool's errand but we can venture to think of the First Commonwealth, the Return to Zion. The psalms were produced by many different poets, over more than half a millennium, perhaps beginning during the tenth century BC, the latest no later than the fifth or, take another hundred years, the fourth century BC.   By the late first century BC, the Book of Psalms was so central to the scriptural canon that in Luke 24:44 it is mentioned together with the Torah and the Prophets as one of the three primary categories of the sacred writings.  So tells me Robert Alter, whose translation of the Book of Psalms is dear to me. The oldest surviving description of cancer is written on a papyrus from around 1600 B.C.  The hieroglyphics ...

Lord, You searched me and You know. These words begin Psalm 139, considered one of the most introspective in the canonical collection.  This beautiful, beautiful poem reaches across centuries--imagine them unrolling, the dating of the psalms is a fool's errand but we can venture to think of the First Commonwealth, the Return to Zion. The psalms were produced by many different poets, over more than half a millennium, perhaps beginning during the tenth century BC, the latest no later than the fifth or, take another hundred years, the fourth century BC.   By the late first century BC, the Book of Psalms was so central to the scriptural canon that in Luke 24:44 it is mentioned together with the Torah and the Prophets as one of the three primary categories of the sacred writings.  So tells me Robert Alter, whose translation of the Book of Psalms is dear to me. The oldest surviving description of cancer is written on a papyrus from around 1600 B.C.  The hieroglyphi...

A year ago, I was fooling myself that I was in good health.  I was exhausted, it is true, and first my lower back and then my chest hurt in new, deep ways.  I told myself the pain was due to a fall on the ice and then, perhaps, because I had moved something heavy in a strange way and injured my muscles, or my nerves--whatever I had done, it wasn't enough to pull me away from working long hours and worrying about work for even longer hours.  I had gone to the urgent care facilities near my home and seen my doctor, and I was diagnosed with everything from costochondritis to depression.  A year ago, I defined myself as a working mother--I was proud of my career and where it was headed. I had been promoted in the last couple of years, and I felt confident about my place at the firm, valued and heard. I was in love with my children and with my partner, and I thought I was clear-eyed about the depth and complexity of those relationships.  And of course, I had my dear ...

A year ago, I was fooling myself that I was in good health.  I was exhausted, it is true, and first my lower back and then my chest hurt in new, deep ways.  I told myself the pain was due to a fall on the ice and then, perhaps, because I had moved something heavy in a strange way and injured my muscles, or my nerves--whatever I had done, it wasn't enough to pull me away from working long hours and worrying about work for even longer hours.  I had gone to the urgent care facilities near my home and seen my doctor, and I was diagnosed with everything from costochondritis to depression.  A year ago, I defined myself as a working mother--I was proud of my career and where it was headed. I had been promoted in the last couple of years, and I felt confident about my place at the firm, valued and heard. I was in love with my children and with my partner, and I thought I was clear-eyed about the depth and complexity of those relationships.  And of course, I had my dear...

Here are the ten plagues that the Holy One, Blessed is He, brought upon the Egyptians in Egypt: blood, frogs, lice, a maelstrom of beasts, pestilence, boils, and hail-full-of-fire, locusts, a clotted darkness--too thick to pass.  The killing of the firstborn. My impulse has always been to recoil from this moment in the Passover service, even, as a child, to giggle at the impossibility of such old-fashioned, or strange, or ancient woes: boils? locusts? To pretend that a God I wanted to believe was merciful, a God I want to believe is merciful (for all of us now pray to God that I will be delivered from cancer, every stray eyelash, every birthday candle, every time the clock reads 11:11, we, meaning the tiny circle of people impacted every day, who watch my body like hawks, we all wish for such a miracle) is not capable of taking away the breath of children, of our collectively beloved first borns. My Cameron, your Willa, your Justin. These plagues are not simply useful metaphors, t...

Here are the ten plagues that the Holy One, Blessed is He, brought upon the Egyptians in Egypt: blood, frogs, lice, a maelstrom of beasts, pestilence, boils, and hail-full-of-fire, locusts, a clotted darkness--too thick to pass.  The killing of the firstborn. My impulse has always been to recoil from this moment in the Passover service, even, as a child, to giggle at the impossibility of such old-fashioned, or strange, or ancient woes: boils? locusts? To pretend that a God I wanted to believe was merciful, a God I want to believe is merciful (for all of us now pray to God that I will be delivered from cancer, every stray eyelash, every birthday candle, every time the clock reads 11:11, we, meaning the tiny circle of people impacted every day, who watch my body like hawks, we all wish for such a miracle) is not capable of taking away the breath of children, of our collectively beloved first borns. My Cameron, your Willa, your Justin. These plagues are not simply useful metaphor...