The Sibling Society and The Child Within Us
Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Cafe Years ago I read Robert Bly’s The Sibling Society in which Bly asked “Where have all the grownups gone?” Adults have regressed into adolescence, Bly wrote, and adolescents refuse to grow up. Has maturity gone out of style I wonder? What is it that inclines us toward resisting…
Grief and Guilt
A blue striped fabric covered notebook with letters spelling “Poetry” sat on a little bookcase in my parents bedroom when I was growing up. I looked at it once but didn’t pay that much attention. It had a lot of clippings of poems and articles that my mother had found worth keeping and it had…
Spaciousness
Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Cafe When I was in high school we had an exchange student from Japan who was amazed at the open spaces of northern Oklahoma, at that time still populated by large swaths of farmland. When we moved to Montana, known as “Big Sky Country,” I was amazed at how…
Manners & Morality
Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Cafe Edmund Burke argued that culture, which he called “manners,” is more important than politics. Manners, he wrote, “are of more importance than laws. Upon them, in great measure, the laws depend…Manners are what vex or soothe, corrupt or purify, exalt or debase, barbarize or refine us, by a…
Revisiting Hope
Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Cafe In 2021 I ended a post with this quote from Zig Ziglar: “If there is hope for the future, there is power in the present.” Re-reading that blog today, written a few short weeks after our nation’s capital was under siege January 6, 2021, I was reminded of…
John Paul Lederbach
Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Café “A few blogs ago, I shared a quote from John Paul Lederach: “Building peace is more often about creating space, developing relationships, persevering in spite of overwhelming pessimism, and being flexible enough to respond to emerging opportunities, meager as they may be.” Having never heard of him, I…
The Beauty of the Pause
Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Café “The way to develop the habit of savoring is to pause when something is beautiful and good and catches our attention—the sound of rain, the look of the night sky—the glow in a child’s eyes, or when we witness some act of kindness. Pause…then totally immerse in the…
Embracing Light
This past week we were treated to a Super Moon that was spectacular. The moon was closer to the earth. The earth was closer to the sun. I was never one to lie basking in the sun. Give me a moonlight stroll anytime! But sun or moon, we are people drawn to light. In the…
Auld Lang Syne
Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Café One friend sent a Christmas letter in which she noted that she and her husband had decided this would be the last year to send Christmas cards, time and expense involved becoming more than they wanted to manage. Fortunately, she is among a group of friends that keeps…
“The Peaceful Side” of Christmas
Two Cups of Tea at Hope’s Cafe We live not far from Smoky Mountain National Park, the most visited national park in the United States .Nestled midst the thriving tourist sites of Gatlinburg and Dollywood is the village of Townsend, TN, billed as “The Peaceful Side of the Smokies,” for its much smaller area, quieter…
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
Follow My Blog
Get new content delivered directly to your inbox.
Hope's Cafe 