Returning to ourselves

Valorie Grace HallinanLeave a comment
Spirit Rock gate
Spirit Rock Meditation Center, 2010

Nine of us were about to begin our first small-group meeting at Spirit Rock Meditation Center, where I was on a silent retreat. The meetings gave our teachers a chance to check in on our well-being and meditation practice. Did we have any questions? Were we facing any challenges?

Six young to middle-aged men sat across from me. My son, who works in tech, said meditation was gaining popularity in his field, and I guessed several of the men in my group worked in tech. Most of them were new to meditation and had never attended a silent retreat.

When I last went to Spirit Rock over a dozen years ago, there were far more women than men, but now only two other women my age were in our small group.

This will be interesting, I thought.

L was a teddy bear of a man with a presence that filled the room. His words tumbled out on top of each other, peppered with comic, self-deprecating asides: “I’ve never been diagnosed, but no question I have ADD. I constantly monitor six screens in my office. At home, I’ve got more screens, plus my smartphone and the TV remote, and I work them all while my kids and I watch football. Multitasking is my default setting, and my friend and work pal sitting here next to me wanted me to try meditation. I don’t know about all this silence and sitting, but I guess I’ll see what happens…”

***

Two days later, we met for our second small-group session.

L had had enough.

“I can’t sit for one more minute. I’m bored out of my mind. This isn’t for me. I’m leaving, except I can’t because I came with my friend, and he’s driving…”

“Boredom is a good sign,” Howie, our teacher, interrupted. “Meditation can be a purity practice, and as discomfort arises, you practice sitting with it…”

“That doesn’t work for me. I know when I’ve reached my limit. I’m not cut out for this. We can move on to the next person; they can take my turn to speak because I have nothing…”

Howie leaned forward, visibly annoyed. “Look at me, L. Stop talking and look at me.” Howie was not going to let L deflect.

“You don’t even know how much you’re suffering. You think you do, but you have no idea.”

L was silent, and the rest of us were, too. J, a young man with whom I seemed to share a vibe and whom I fancied would be a great partner for my son (see my previous post), caught my eye, as if to say, are you catching this drama, too?

“You need to stay here,” Howie said. “You need to sit with this. Because if you don’t face this now, when will you ever? Is this how you want to spend your life, going from screen to screen? Is this how you want to be with your family? Years will go by, and you’ll have spent your life everywhere but in the present moment.”

L listened, taking in Howie’s words.

We sat with L in his vulnerability; I hoped he felt our goodwill surrounding him. After all, when you get right down to it, weren’t we all in the same boat? Weren’t we all constantly moving from screen to screen and distraction to distraction, distanced from ourselves, our loved ones, and the unprecedented challenges urgently demanding our attention?

***

The evening before the last day of the retreat, L happened to sit next to me at dinner. We ate in silence for a while, and then I turned to him. “Do you mind if I say something?”

“Not at all.”

“You’re still here. I’ve been watching, and you’re still here.” I smiled. “Would you come back to Spirit Rock?”

L didn’t hesitate. “100 percent. 100 percent, I’d come here again.”

Truly, I was amazed. L seemed to be in a very different place.

“I’m so glad you stayed. Maybe someday you’ll teach meditation.”

“Me?” L looked surprised, doubtful.

“You’d be good at it. You’ll really know what you’re talking about.”

“My friend and I went hiking yesterday,” L said, “and we were discussing you.”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. (I figured he already knew he wasn’t supposed to be hiking and talking with a friend on a silent retreat, and I decided not to tease him about that.)

“We both think you have no reason to feel low self-esteem. You literally exude happiness and joy.”

I hadn’t expected these kind, sweet words. I’d told the group that my low self-esteem issues had been showing up, especially when I worked on revising my memoir.

“Thank you for telling me that.” I almost said that happiness and joy certainly weren’t my default state; like everyone else, I often had to work at it. But, of course, L already knew that, too.

L reached out and shook my hand. “I’ll say goodbye now because we have to leave tonight.”

“Maybe we’ll meet again someday on the path,” I said.

L stood up, dishes in hand. “These vegetarian meals are great, but I hope the next time I’m here they’ll have seen the light and started serving dessert.”

***

I wasn’t sure if I should write about L, but I don’t think he would mind. This past month since the retreat, I’ve remembered him from time to time, somewhere in Pittsburgh, perhaps with fewer screens in his life. I’ve imagined J at work in Manhattan, and the others I met at Spirit Rock going about their day-to-day lives.

Now and then, I send a meditation their way from North Carolina: May you be filled with loving-kindness. May you be safe and protected. May you be well in body and mind. May you be happy.

***

How to Focus by Thich Nhat Hanh fits in the palm of your hand. You can keep it nearby while meditating and read a page or two. I adore this little book. Below are two passages from it.

“Conscious breathing is a marvelous way to return to ourselves. When we are aware of our breath, we come back to ourselves as quick as a flash of lightning. Like a child who returns home after a long journey, we feel the warmth of our hearth, and we find ourselves again. To come back to ourselves like that is already a remarkable success on the path of mindfulness, concentration, and insight.”

“The day your mother passes away, you suffer. If someone sits close to you and shows concern, you feel some relief. This is the world of waves. It is characterized by birth and death, ups and downs, being and nonbeing. A wave has a beginning and an end, but we cannot ascribe these characteristics to water. In the world of water, there is no birth or death, no being or nonbeing, no beginning or end. When we touch the water, we touch reality in its ultimate dimension and are liberated from all these concepts. If you know how to touch your mother in the ultimate dimension, she will always be with you; you can see that she is there in you, smiling. This is a deep practice and it is also the deepest kind of relief.”

Photo: Cannon Beach, Oregon

I feel hope coming

Valorie Grace HallinanLeave a comment
Walking to the meditation hall at Spirit Rock.

I don’t want your martial law, I want clean air.

I don’t want no enemies that ain’t even there.

– “I Feel Hope Coming,” Alabama Shakes

Attending a silent retreat at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. Remembering 9/11. Marking the passing of poet, novelist, and essayist Wendell Berry. A lot of life happened in the space of a dozen September days.

When I was living in New York City and working in book publishing, I’d take out-of-town guests to see the World Trade Center and my favorite view of the five boroughs. We’d gaze at the city from the observation deck or, if the wind was calm, from the rooftop. I never tired of the dizzying height or the panorama. I’d imagine my maternal and paternal grandparents from Sweden and Sicily, sailing into New York Harbor past the Statue of Liberty along with thousands of other immigrants.

By the time 9/11 happened, I was living upstate and raising a family. My husband and I limited our TV viewing of the tragedy because our sons were so young. In the years after, I never took the time to look back at that day.

But this September 11, on the 25th anniversary, I did. Social media, which I usually avoid, streamed dozens of interviews with survivors and the families of those killed, telling their unbelievable stories. After the Spirit Rock retreat, my heart was wide open, and I listened to those touched by 9/11. They had looked deeply at life and had made it their work to share their joys, sorrows, and hard-won wisdom.

A silent retreat can open your heart that way.

Days of silence and hours of meditation might seem like an impossible feat, but the routine of a silent retreat changes on the hour, with a beautiful rotation of sitting and walking meditations, a daily work assignment, teachings, Q & A sessions, and small-group meetings with the teachers. Each day begins at 5:30 am with a wake-up bell and ends at 9:30 pm, often with music. There are, of course, no smartphones or other devices. You find yourself rising to the occasion in surprising ways. The expansive silence holds every possibility.

“Spiritual practice can be as simple as a breath.” Brad Stuhlberg, The Way of Excellence: A Guide to Deep Satisfaction and True Greatness in a Chaotic World.

Nearly twenty years ago, Jack Kornfield and his book, The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, enticed me to follow the insight, or vipassana, meditation path. When I pulled the book off my shelf the other day, I noticed that one chapter had an abundance of notes and underlinings: The Storytelling Mind, something many of us find ourselves working with on retreat.

We tell ourselves stories of varying accuracy as we strive to make meaning in our lives. This is normal and natural, but sometimes we forget that these stories are shaped by our personal filters and idiosyncratic interpretations. As we grow more discerning, we learn to revise or abandon a particular story that may not accurately reflect reality.

For example, on the retreat, I felt a particular kinship with J, a young man in my small practice group. I began to imagine that he could be the perfect partner for my son, who had just gone through a breakup. A fantasy, I realized, which I tried to hold lightly with a measure of humor. My maternal instinct (I’ve raised two sons and have two younger brothers) must have been working overtime.

One morning, I skipped meditation and walked instead. Over the Marin Hills, shafts of sunlight parted the fog like curtains opening to the light. As if someone were standing next to me and whispering in my ear, I heard a message that seemed to brilliantly capture the essence of a piece of writing I’d been struggling with. I knew I would be able to move forward in the writing with greater confidence and clarity.

On day 4 of the retreat, I went with anticipation to the afternoon talk because we’d been encouraged not to miss it. Before I knew it, Jack Kornfield was walking up to the dais. One of the most venerable teachers of insight meditation in America today, and the author of some of the most life-changing books I’ve ever read, gave us a beautiful teaching and led us in a lovingkindness meditation. I don’t have the words to describe the great kindness and wisdom with which Jack spoke to us that day.

We train our hearts to hold the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. This is not easy. But we learn to hold it all, even amid the chaos. And we sweep our gardens. We do the work the world asks of us. – Jack Kornfield

“The mind creates the abyss; the heart crosses it.” – Nisargadatta, Indian sage

“The thinking mind constructs views of right and wrong, good and bad, self and other. These are the abyss. When we let thoughts come and go without clinging, we can use thought, but we rest in the heart. There is an innocence to the heart. We are the child of the spirit. And there is an innate wisdom. We are the ancient one. Resting in the heart, we become trusting and courageous, and our patience grows. We do not have to think things through. Life is unfolding around us.” – Jack Kornfield, The Wise Heart

Prayer wheel at Spirit Rock.

May all beings be filled with loving kindness.

It is amazing how close you feel to people after sitting with them in silence for five days.

By the way, Spirit Rock offers scholarships.

***

Wendell Berry passed away on August 31. In 2017, I wrote about his novel, Hannah Coulter, and a collection of his essays, Our Only World, on Books Can Save a Life. I’m struck by the excerpts of Berry’s work that I included in the posts – this is extraordinary writing, folks. And I’d forgotten about all the heartfelt comments left by my blog readers.

The novel Jayber Crow and the essay collections Citizenship Papers, The World-Ending Fire, and The Art of the Commonplace wait on my to-be-read bookshelf, and I’ve moved them up in the queue.

Below is a 7-minute meditation on the passing of Wendell Berry by Dale Biron. Dale’s stunning rendering of “The Peace of Wild Things” captures Berry’s iconic poem with nuance and tenderness. Each word, each pause, is given its due. Please listen!

***

A friend told me about this beautiful song that speaks especially to our times.

***

water lily
No mud, no lotus. – Thich Nhat Hanh
Remembering our beloved water garden, upstate New York, 2012.

We train our hearts to hold the 10,000 joys and 10,000 sorrows. This is not easy. But we learn to hold it all, even amid the chaos. And we sweep our gardens. We do the work the world asks of us. – Jack Kornfield

We can all be saved by the beauty of the world

Valorie Grace Hallinan11 Comments

One of the most famous American poems ever written is calling to you:

Wild Geese

…..Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting – 

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

One of the most famous American poets is calling to you:

“When they [people] are in a state of being torn open by life, and they need someone to speak to that state of the soul – it’s Mary Oliver. It’s a Mary Oliver poem that they find themselves held by. And they don’t need a critic to explain to them why.”    

Ariana Reines, in “Saved By the Beauty of the World.”

Mary Oliver’s poetry is for everyone. 

You don’t have to be a poetry connoisseur. You don’t need to know anything about poetry to experience the pleasure of encountering one of her poems for the first time and the deep solace her words offer in times of grief.

It gave Mary Oliver immense satisfaction to see her poems have such wide appeal, even among people who don’t typically read poetry. That was exactly what she intended.

The new PBS American Masters documentary, “Mary Oliver: Saved By the Beauty of the World,” which airs at 9 pm EST on Tuesday, August 25, is now playing in select theaters across the country, many of which are sold out. 

If you’re new to Mary Oliver, your “beginner’s mind” might be dazzled by what you hear.

If you are already a Mary Oliver fan, you may not see as much of her in the documentary as you’d like, since she gave so few interviews, but you’ll appreciate the famous and immensely cool people singing her praises and savoring her poems. 

Mary Oliver and I are from the same suburban Cleveland town, though she came along twenty years before my time. She wrote about skipping school and heading into the woods with a book of Walt Whitman poems; I know the woods (now long gone) she described. 

She wrote a poem about a beloved pond replaced by the then-largest shopping center in America; I know that shopping center (now largely neglected and abandoned), where we bought our school clothes and our fancy birthday cakes.

I didn’t pay much attention when Mary Oliver won the Pulitzer Prize in 1984. Even though I’d majored in English literature and was working in book publishing in New York City, I hadn’t read poetry in years. When I sampled a few poems from her collection, “American Primitive,” they didn’t speak to me, maybe because, amid skyscrapers and endless concrete, nature felt distant and irrelevant.

But somewhere along the line, I gave Mary Oliver another try. It must have been the right poem (I don’t remember which) at the right time. I don’t have the words to describe what I felt. I suppose you could call it a revelation, a kind of conversion. By then, I’d left New York City, in part to be closer to the natural world. Here was a poet inviting me to go even deeper into nature.  I have read Mary Oliver’s poems ever since. They tell me how to live.

Below are a couple of the best performances of Mary Oliver’s poems I was able to find online.

Candace Barrett Birk’s recitation of “When Death Comes” is captivating. Despite the bleak title, I think Mary’s expansive vision will lift you up.


“The Journey,” which hints at trauma and the instinct to survive, is one of Mary Oliver’s most powerful and best-loved poems. I prefer this performance by singer/songwriter Chris Thile to the one in the documentary, though both are moving.  

The day I went to the theater in Cleveland Heights to see “Saved By the Beauty of the World,” the air quality was so poor because of the Canadian wildfires that I wore a mask. 

I’d just heard, in an oddly definitive and poorly reported PBS newscast, that the age of reading (and, by implication, writing) is now over because of screens and AI.

I want poems written by humans, not by machines, don’t you?

I want poems that urge us to consider very, very carefully what we plan to do with our one wild and precious life.

Mary Oliver died in 2019, but I don’t think her poetry will fade. I believe her voice will become more relevant, more urgent, and more treasured as we face a very uncertain future. 

Taking steps

Valorie Grace Hallinan2 Comments
Atop Occoneechee Mountain, winter view of the Eno River

If God exists, he isn’t just churches…He’s the forest, He’s the desert. He’s the ice caps, that are dying….” Mary Oliver

…We have the intelligence to grasp what is happening…and the courage to take steps that may bear no fruit in our lifetime.” Barry Lopez

THIS IS A CORRECTED VERSION OF A PREVIOUS POST.

As I write this, the temperature at the Raleigh-Durham International Airport is 98 degrees.

We’ve had almost no rain this spring and early summer. The Triangle has reached “exceptional drought” levels, the most severe category used by the U.S. Drought Monitor.

The Eno River is dangerously low, with flow far less than 30 percent of the historical median for this time of year. Yet in 2025, the Eno rose to 26 feet during Tropical Storm Chantal, flooding the immediate area and reaching the height of a local overpass bridge, during a day with over 10 inches of rain. Earlier in 2025, Hurricane Helene nearly wiped Asheville off the map and completely destroyed nearby towns.

We often hike at Occoneechee Speedway, a raceway converted to a nature retreat in the 1980s. The Eno River inundated a good portion of it during Tropical Storm Chantal.

Yet our mighty little community is awake, aware, and responding.

In April, Hillsborough volunteer groups held a Climate Challenge that was exceptional in its breadth and depth. My husband and I attended a dozen events between us. All the bases were covered. On the technical side, an expert from The Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment, and Sustainability at Duke University gave a presentation on heat. I didn’t know heat is the leading cause of weather-related death in the United States.

A panel of experts discussed drinking water and flooding, and the local Bluestem Conservation Cemetery held an open house with information about green burial. There were excellent presentations on permaculture and composting, as well as a documentary about Duke Energy’s climate deception. Concerned Carolinians led a rally for climate action at the courthouse square.

On a clear night, stargazing at the Confluence Natural Area, where the two forks of the Eno River merge to form the river’s main stem, drew a crowd, and so did a regenerative farm tour. Local restaurants hosted three “Meatless Mondays,” and there were guided nature walks on the Riverwalk and at the Confluence.

I believe we are urgently called to change our relationship with nature. With our technical knowledge, we are fully capable of making this transformation, but not without a strong sense of intention, devotion, and joy. Art, literature, music, poetry, spiritual practices, celebrations, and rituals that honor the earth – all of these and more can help us step up to the challenges ahead, and I was delighted that the Climate Challenge included these dimensions as well.

In fact, the many Climate Challenge events complemented one another, making for a rich overall experience. I especially appreciated seeing familiar faces show up at event after event. There was a strong sense of community.

Amazingly, our town has a Poet Laureate. Amal Kassir wrote original poetry for the Challenge, gave a beautiful reading on Earth Day, and led a poetry-writing workshop. Please be sure to listen to the three brief poetry selections below – they are the shining stars of this blog post.

Poet Laureate of Hillsborough, Amal Kassir, inspiring us with her original poetry written for the Climate Challenge. When she says, “I keep the family tree afruit,” Amal means this literally – she and her husband are expecting a baby this summer.

I had the opportunity to lead an earth meditation, and a therapist taught practices to help us acknowledge and express our grief over climate change and disruption. Someone who attended the eco-grief event talked about her sorrow over what her grandchildren may face going forward, and said it hadn’t occurred to her that these feelings are actually a form of grief.

One of the reasons I became a mindfulness meditation teacher is that I believe our culture hesitates to express and even name grief stemming from climate change or the inevitable personal loss that comes with life.

As Francis Weller writes in his books The Wild Edge of Sorrow and In the Absence of the Ordinary, “In today’s world, most of us carry grief and do not even know it. We have been trained at a very young age how not to feel.”

I love how mindfulness meditation teaches us to listen deeply to ourselves, cut through the numbing and constant distraction, and unearth emotions that may be causing needless suffering. The beauty of this kind of “awakening” is that the opening of our hearts that comes with accepting, welcoming, and normalizing our grief opens us to the infinite goodness inherent in the universe. We come to balance our grief with a hopeful and replenishing sense of emergence and possibility.

The poetry of fireflies and awe…..

To me, Amal’s poetry embodies this sense of emergence and possibility. Despite our lack of respect for nature and the widespread diminishment of species and landscapes across the planet, a mysterious life force presses on, replenishing and renewing the earth and all of us.

One final snippet of poetry from Amal……

“…that is to say, love is a seed.”

Revisiting H Is for Hawk

Valorie Grace HallinanLeave a comment
H is for Hawk

“….her feet were gnarled and dusty, her eyes a deep, fiery orange, and she was beautiful. Beautiful like a granite cliff or a thunder-cloud. She completely filled the room. She had a massive back of sun-bleached grey feathers, was as muscled as a pit bull, and intimidating as hell….”  H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald

Helen Macdonald’s father, Alisdair Macdonald, was an iconic British photojournalist, and his daughter’s biggest fan. “He was the only person who understood me,” Helen says in his eulogy.

This isn’t hard to believe. Helen is a brilliant entomologist, difficult and eccentric, as portrayed in the just-released movie based on the memoir.

The movie, H Is for Hawk, is good. The memoir is better. It is the story of Helen’s training of a goshawk, a fiendishly difficult undertaking, and a metaphor for her struggle with grief and depression. (A book blogging friend of mine suggested that H stands for Helen, too, and I think she is right.)

At the time of its publication, H Is for Hawk was something of a breakthrough for its unique way of combining memoir with nature writing.

H Is for Hawk is well worth your time if you are up for challenging, multi-layered nature writing that explores the mysteries of human and wildlife psychology. This memoir is a classic.

Here is my post from 2016:

Helen Macdonald’s reaction to her father dying suddenly was to embark on the extraordinarily difficult task of training a goshawk, one of nature’s fiercest and most ruthless predators.

Goshawks are cold-hearted, lifelong loners with no social instincts whatsoever. They bond with no one, not the goshawk they mate with, not other goshawks, not any human who wants to train them. You can’t look them in the eye, either, because if you do they might attack you.

Goshawks don’t respond to punishment. The only way to train a goshawk is to be submissive and patient, eyes cast down at all times. Tim Gallagher, in a review of H Is for Hawk, likens this to being a kind of monk. It is not a part-time thing. Training a goshawk is all-consuming. It takes over your life.

Helen writes about the hawk she is training, whom she names Mabel:

“Everything about the hawk is tuned and turned to hunt and kill. Yesterday I discovered that when I suck air through my teeth and make a squeaking noise like an injured rabbit, all the tendons in her toes instantaneously contract, driving her talons into the glove with terrible, crushing force. This killing grip is an old, deep pattern in her brain, an innate response that hasn’t yet found the stimulus meant to release it. Because other sounds provoke it: door hinges, squealing breaks, bicycles with unoiled wheels – and on the second afternoon, Joan Sutherland singing an aria on the radio. Ow. I laughed out loud at that. Stimulus: opera. Response: kill.”

Two goshawks
Goshawk. Rare Book Division, New York Public Library

When Helen was a child, she and her father spent many days roaming the countryside as Alisdair indulged his passion for airplanes and Helen her growing passion for birds.

After Alisdair died, Helen wanted a distraction from her grief, something deeply immersive and challenging. In this respect, H Is for Hawk is unlike other memoirs. There isn’t a lot about Helen’s father or her relationship with him, or about Helen’s feelings of sadness and loss, per se. These are subsumed into an arresting narrative of Helen’s struggle to achieve what seems to be impossible as she grapples with her grief.

As Helen comes to understand, “Shocking loss isn’t to be shared, no matter how hard you try.”

Helen was, in fact, an experienced falconer, but she’d never taken on a goshawk before. She brought along a companion in her unusual undertaking: T. H. White’s, The Goshawk, White’s account of his own experience training a goshawk in the 1930s. (Remember T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone, The Once and Future King, and other tales of Arthurian legend? Even if you didn’t read the books, you’ve probably seen the movie/musical Camelot and the Disney version of The Sword in the Stone.)

This weaving of T.H. White’s experiences into Helen’s narrative is fascinating; White, who was gay in a culture and time when this was unacceptable, was grappling with his own loss and inner darkness. Helen writes,

“It took me a long time to realise how many of our classic books on animals were by gay writers who wrote of their relationships with animals in lieu of human loves of which they could not speak.”

And this:

“….White wrote one of the saddest sentences I have ever read: ‘Falling in love is a desolating experience, but not when it is with a countryside.’ He could not imagine a human love returned. He had to displace his desires onto the landscape, that great, blank green field that cannot love you back, but cannot hurt you either.”

Helen’s immersion with Mabel, her goshawk, is harrowing. She holds nothing back in the struggle, and she holds nothing back from her reader.

Ultimately, Helen has to confront her obsession with the goshawk and her nearly complete withdrawal from friends and family. Where does obsession end and madness begin?

Before you read H Is for Hawk, I highly recommend that you read this fascinating review by Tim Gallagher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology All About Birds site. Gallagher puts the human-training-a-goshawk challenge into context, and I think it will pique your interest. Not knowing a raptor from a falcon from a hawk myself, I wish I’d read this review first. And I’ve a soft spot in my heart for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and the good work they do. We live not far from there, and I’ve seen at least one of their research sites in the Finger Lakes countryside.

Read H Is for Hawk if you want a different kind of memoir that demands to be read slowly, one word, one phrase, one sentence at a time. If you’re willing and want to slow down and immerse in another world entirely.

I expect I’ll read H Is for Hawk once or twice more down the road, as I simply couldn’t take it all in the first time through. If I’ve painted a rather dark picture of this unusual memoir, there is light and wisdom gained, too:

“There is a time in life when you expect the world to be always full of new things. And then comes a day when you realise that is not how it will be at all. You see that life will become a thing made of holes. Absences. Losses. Things that were there and are no longer. And you realise, too, that you have to grow around and between the gaps, […]”

Coming for the librarians (and the books)

Valorie Grace Hallinan7 Comments

“I’m doing a criminal investigation of your staff. Essentially, the librarians are my suspects.” – county chief deputy officer entering a Texas public school library (transcript of body cam footage from The Librarians documentary )

On Friday evenings, I like to have a glass of wine, make a nice meal, and maybe watch some mindless TV with my husband. But not on this particular Friday night last fall.

Our local public library was hosting a showing of the documentary The Librarians, about book banning in America and, obviously, I wasn’t going to miss it. (For those of you new to my blog, because I’m an avid, lifelong reader, an academic librarian by training, a former children’s book editor, and a writer. And because, of course, Books Can Save a Life!!!)

Every seat was filled. At least half a dozen librarians were in the audience, and I had the good fortune to sit next to one. So I had a kindred spirit nearby as we channeled our disbelief and outrage while, on the screen, one hard-to-believe book-banning drama after another played out in Texas, Florida, Louisiana, and New Jersey.

“This is not a communist nation. You do NOT get to pick our reading material. It is ours.” – Suzette Baker, former Llano County Head Librarian, Texas, fired when she refused to take How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi and Between the World and Me by Ta-Nahesi Coates off the shelves.

Right now we are an embarrassment in the state of Florida.” – The Reverend Jeffrey Dove, Clay City, Florida

I could focus on any number of issues regarding the documentary, such as First Amendment rights, the definition of pornography, the removal of marginal voices from American libraries, or what, exactly, is deemed educationally unsuitable. But what most shocked me was how deeply divided communities have become and how harshly some book banners treat community members they may have known or worked alongside for years.

Our library featured a panel discussion, and at some point, someone used the term “religious psychosis,” which resonated with me. I found the story of Weston Brown and his mother a heartbreaking example of this, difficult to watch. Weston, who is gay, was disowned by his mother, Evangelical Christian Monica Brown, and is not allowed to be part of his siblings’ lives.

After she began publicly advocating for the removal of LGBTQ+ themed books from school libraries in their Texas town, Weston spoke out against book banning at a school board meeting that his mother attended. She then came to the podium and, ignoring her son, spoke passionately (and in crude, offensive language) about banning certain books that had been carefully vetted by librarians.

Another thread in the documentary featured the Reverend Jeffrey Dove in Clay City, Florida, who became concerned about the Llano County library director, who had been slandered by community members and removed from her job. What struck me was the sight of Reverend Dove, who is Black, patiently waiting for three hours to speak while the town council (all white) ignored him. When he was finally allowed to speak, Reverend Dove defended the library director and highlighted the value of the banned titles. His is truly one of the most eloquent voices in the documentary.

It seems to me that some have been blinded by a kind of irrational and dangerous religious and/or political fervor that overrides our common humanity.

On February 9, 2026, The Librarians will air widely across the country on the PBS program, Independent Lens. You can also check the listings on The Librarians website to see if it is coming to your city. Better yet, contact your local library and ask them to host a viewing.

School librarian and anti-censorship advocate Amanda Jones tells the story of her efforts to fight book banning in her hometown of Louisiana Parish, Louisiana. Her life was upended, and she felt compelled to tell her community’s story, which is playing out across the country. She says in the memoir that she doesn’t see herself as a writer, and I do wish that she’d had a better editor. Nonetheless, That Librarian is an important and revelatory testimony about book-banning efforts in America.

Walking for Peace in Liberty, NC

Valorie Grace Hallinan13 Comments

The Walk for Peace is an offering to the community regardless of faith, culture, or background…to promote national healing, unity, and compassion by awakening the peace that lives within each of us. – Paraphrased from the Dhammacetiya website of the Huong Dao Vipassana Bhavana Center, Fort Worth, Texas

The nearly two dozen Buddhist monks walking 2300 miles for peace have been making their way across North Carolina for the past several days, with large, enthusiastic turnouts. The monks set out from their home base, a Vietnamese Buddhist monastery in Fort Worth, with Washington, DC, as their final destination.

My husband, our friend Beth, and I wanted to see them, but figuring out their route was a challenge, as it often changes. On Day 88 of their journey, we caught up with them in Liberty, North Carolina. The day turned out to be deeply restorative and unforgettable.

The town gave the monks a full escort. As they approached, a hush came over the crowd.

I’d never set foot in Liberty, a small, rural, and diverse town. When we arrived, the streets were blocked off, and crowds were gathering on the sidewalks and at the fire station, where the monks would have their only meal of the day, give a talk, and pass out peace bracelets.

I spoke with the clerk at the mini-mart, the other customers, and a few of the volunteer traffic monitors, but no one knew the monks’ arrival time. The clerk, perhaps of Indian descent, seemed excited but unsure of who exactly they were. I encouraged her to step outside when the monks passed by, saying she wouldn’t regret it.

There was such a sense of anticipation, and the community vibes were so welcoming. We stood next to a long-time resident, Faye, a committed Christian, thrilled that Buddhist monks were going to pass through her town.

Nearby, a young man with a megaphone and loudspeaker preached about Jesus and how the monks were unsaved, sent by Satan. More than one person asked him to stop, but he persisted. I was relieved to see everyone leave him alone and then forget all about him when the monks passed by a short time later.

Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara spoke about mindfulness meditation and its benefits; he pointed out that meditation has nothing to do with religion or Buddhism, per se. It is something any of us can do to become grounded, centered, and focused in an age of distraction.

Learning to be mindful and in the present moment may sound like a cliché, but it can give us our lives back, he said. I’ve recently become certified to teach mindfulness meditation, and hearing his message confirmed the work I’ve been doing.

“We should feel grateful because we have so many religions in the world to serve all human beings…At the end we are having one religion together, the religion of peace, loving kindness, and compassion.”

Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara

In the midst of Venerable Bhikkhu’s talk, there was a medical emergency in the crowd. As the paramedics arrived, Bhikkhu encouraged us all to place our hands on our hearts, sense our hearts beating, and maintain silence. I’d never seen such a large crowd in deep, meditative silence, which lasted about 15 minutes. The love and caring were palpable. Fortunately, after a time, the woman recovered enough to walk to the ambulance.

Deep silence as the crowd meditated

Some of the monks walk without shoes. They have one meal a day.

The monks say that peace is not a destination, but a practice. Beautiful encounters such as these can touch something sacred deep within a person, which begins to unfold.

I thought about how sustaining a mindfulness practice can be for anyone fighting to preserve freedom and democracy, as these difficult times demand.

Photo by MJ Merwin

I wrote this post as news reports emerged that federal agents shot and killed Alex Jeffrey Pretti in Minneapolis.

The world will surely need this great gift that the monks would like us to know about.

Make Good Trouble

Valorie Grace Hallinan4 Comments

make room for wonder….

Renee Nicole Good, “On Learning to Dissect Fetal Pigs,” American Academy of Poets Prize Winner, 2020

Renee sparkled. She literally sparkled. I mean, she didn’t wear glitter but I swear she had sparkles coming out of her pores. All the time. You might think it was just my love talking but her family said the same thing. Renee was made of sunshine.

Renee lived by an overarching belief: there is kindness in the world and we need to do everything we can to find it where it resides and nurture it where it needs to grow.  – Becca Good

Midwinter Light

Valorie Grace Hallinan4 Comments
A highlight of the Winter Solstice Lantern Walk along the Eno River, NC, 2025.

The fear is ancient and uncomplicated, part of our human-animal inheritance…will the darkness swallow me, will it swallow us all together? Nina MacLaughlin, Winter Solstice: An Essay

Happy New Year to my friends and readers!

Here is a post full of little treasures to light up your midwinter days and usher in the New Year.

Never in my life have I seen the winter solstice celebrated with so much exuberance. Last year, on our first winter solstice in Hillsborough, North Carolina, I assumed the annual lantern walk along the Eno River would be a quiet affair with a few dozen souls. Not at all. Thousands of people showed up with the most inventive homemade lanterns I’d ever seen.

Before you read past this paragraph, PLEASE click the link below to last year’s walk. It will put you in the mood for the rest of this post, which is full of all things Winter Solstice. In last year’s video, you’ll see drone footage of the magical riverside procession, an illuminated spiral, and beyond-belief lanterns, with a poetic narration by our town’s very own Poet Laureate, Amal Kassir. (YES, our town has a Poet Laureate. More about Amal at the end of this post.)

Here is the link. Please turn up your volume, enjoy, and then hop back over here:

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1Bo8a6x7qc/

I’ve sprinkled quotes from Nina MacLaughlin’s earthy, primal Winter Solstice essay throughout this post, because it speaks deeply to writer and mixed-media/book artist Suzi Banks Baum, who created and leads Advent Dark Journal. This is an immersion in art, writing, nature, and daily creative practice that I enjoy during the last six weeks of the year.

I’ll write more about Advent Dark Journal in an upcoming post, because Suzi and her creation are worth an in-depth look. For now, here is a glimpse of the small collage and art projects I’ve completed as part of this experience. You’ll see that my Advent calendar has a religious theme, but Advent Dark Journal is not centered around organized religion; rather, it is a “container” of rituals for participants to explore wherever our soulful arisings lead us during this sacred time of year.

“Advent Miracle”
“Earth Holder”

These small, collaged journals and art pieces were sent off to friends – one in Australia – as soon as I completed them. In addition to the art we create in Advent Dark Journal, Suzi encourages us in new, transformational directions. Since I’ve become a regular in Suzi’s workshop, I’ve added a tradition our adult sons and partner enjoy when they visit for the holidays – a fireside Winter Solstice ritual. More about that in an upcoming post, but suffice it to say, Suzi has shown me how to weave a daily creative practice into my life in ways that promote my well-being and that of others in my life.

It is the animal in us that knows the dark. This season stirs that animal in us, and stirs the memories that live in all of us, submerged so deep, of the ancient dark, of a time before gods, before form and words and light….Winter reminds us: the dark was first.

…maybe death is all potential, a means of moving on. And on we go, absorbed into the wet warm belly of eternity, or the roaring big black void, back here as a robin or a wren, in dusted orbit around another planet’s moon, riding on the light. Winter Solstice

Nina MacLaughlin’s Winter Solstice is stellar writing, moody and mysterious. She reminds us of our primal, animal origins; ultimately, we are bound up in the life web and rhythms of the earth, whether we recognize this or not. I purchased Nina’s Summer Solstice essay as well, which I’ll read come summer.

If you are interested in writing that is more traditional, something you can read in small bits alongside your daily journaling or meditation, I recommend Midwinter Light: Poems and Reflections for the Long Season by Marilyn McEntyre. Each day, she includes a poem with commentary that honors this dark season, when growth seems to stop but germinates unseen, to be manifested as the light returns.

“Winter makes us see differently. Noticing is rooted in desires so easily satisfied in spring we barely feel them—for color, for movement, for the sound of birds, and things that bloom. On a walk in midwinter, we experience solitude in a different key. We are surrounded by reminders of mortality and loss, by the absence of what is lush and vivid. We are clothed in layers and aware of our bodily needs in new ways. And the quiet, sometimes, is palpable. It is a good time for prayer: the veil between this dimension and the next seems to have thinned.” Marilyn McEntyre, Midwinter Light: Meditations for the Long Season

Finally, I discovered an excellent picture book with a poem by Susan Cooper and art by Carson Ellis. Both Susan and Carson have won the highest honors for children’s books, and this particular collaboration is special. Susan’s poem “The Shortest Day” is easy to find online. I encourage you to read it. I think you’ll find that Susan’s half-rhymes and cadence create an incantation that perfectly captures the magic and mystery of this dark season.

If you would like the perfect picture book for this time of year, for yourself, or as a gift, I suggest The Shortest Day, written by Newbery Medal winner Susan Cooper and illustrated by Caldecott Honor recipient Carson Ellis.

Happy New Year!

I will return in January with more about Advent Dark Journal, as well as commentary about a provocative documentary you won’t want to miss, especially if you are an avid reader and book-lover.

As Amal Kassir says in her winter solstice poem you may have listened to in the above-linked video, “It only gets brighter from here.”

By the way, PLEASE be sure to check out Amal Kassir’s website and watch her perform her heartbreaking poem, “Broken Arabic.” Her poetry collection, Scud Missile Blues, is available from Amazon. I encourage you to consider purchasing it. We need to support our young poets, and Amal is immensely talented. Just think of all the poems she has yet to give to the world!

Solstice whimsy

Ingrained

Valorie Grace Hallinan11 Comments

If you have last-minute holiday shopping to do and would like to give a fine memoir as a gift, I have a suggestion.

I spotted Ingrained: The Making of a Craftsman by Callum Robinson in a local bookstore and thought that my son’s partner, who is an amateur furniture-maker, might like it. Of course, I decided to sample a chapter. Two days later, I’d finished the memoir, having enjoyed a kind of bliss through the entire reading.

This is a superb, deeply personal book that is also suspenseful, sensual, poetic, and universal. I could smell the cedar, pine, and oak as I read. Makers will love this story, but I don’t think you have to be a maker to respond deeply to this nature-based memoir.

The neat flat-cut edge of its end-grain revealing the gently arcing lines of the tree’s growth rings. Dark reddish brown, like burnt umber or strong tea…It is a broad piece of one-inch elm…Fine close grain tumbles down the board’s length. And a tracery of spectral green streaks across it, like the northern lights.”

Callum Robinson, Ingrained

The workshop owned by master woodworker Callum and his wife, landscape architect and designer Marisa, is about to go under, thanks to the cancellation of a substantial corporate project. Already leveraged to the hilt, the relatively young business faces imminent bankruptcy.

They must change direction, and fast.

Chapter by chapter, the story expands to reveal Callum and Marisa’s world: the devoted young craftsmen who work for them; Callum’s father, also a master woodworker, who jumps in to help set the business in a new direction; the small Scottish town of Linlithgow, where their little studio and workshop reside; the beautiful Scottish forests that supply much of the timber from which their furniture is made; and the customers who eventually browse their shop and can’t resist the furniture they see.

And with its flowing organic transitions, to me the grand elm table feels more like a sculpture than a piece of furniture. To one edge of its mighty top, among the swirling purples, reds, and greens, there remains just the tiniest taste of the tree’s true form. A handbreadth of live edge and finely sanded bark, still visible in the straight, sharp, otherwise regimented lines. A perfect imperfection – a signature – like the crimped pie crust or the fingerprint in the clay.

Callum Robinson

Callum Robinson seamlessly blends the past and present as he tells of his own coming-of-age and how he found his life’s work. His story is relevant to anyone concerned with living in a deeply authentic, meaningful way. You will be rooting for these singular people who design and make furniture of great beauty that will be loved and handed down through the ages.

This is a celebration of the human-designed and handmade. Callum approaches crafting fine furniture from some of the world’s most beautiful trees as if it were pure poetry. His writing is the same.

I look forward to reading more of him.


Nostalgia is a powerful thing. An ethereal link. An ache for something long ago, something that might never really have existed. No other material I know can hold it, or radiate it, quite the way that wood can. And almost nothing made from wood will ever have as many stories locked inside as a family table. Used so often it’s almost invisible, passed down through the generations, scarred by the lives and ingrained with the memories of all those who gathered around it. 

Callum Robinson

Our ponderosa pine homeplace in central Oregon, where we lived for a few years.

Bringing home the tree