Everything Else

Introducing My Other Website

Posted by Steve Roberts on
 January 21, 2018
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Every child has known God.

Not the God of names,

Not the God of don’ts,

Not the God who ever does anything weird,

But the god who only knows

Four words.

And He keeps repeating them, saying:

“Come dance with me.”

~ Hafez

This blog is meant for every person who aspires to use all of life––the brutal, the glorious, the just plain nuts––to cultivate a well-honed heart, one increasingly playful, loving and deep.

Imagine us crossing paths every so often and sharing whatever our experiences are teaching us.  This blog is my contribution.  I hope you’ll add yours when it feels right.

 

VISIT / SUBSCRIBE

 

 

Everything Else
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None of Us Can Ever Have Too Much Mothering

Posted by Steve Roberts on
 May 22, 2017
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Painting, (c)Terry Rose. Photo, (c)Mary Kostman.

Sixty five years ago, E.E. Cummings (1894-1962), also known as e.e. Cummings (in the style of some of his poems), an American artist of diverse genres, was invited by his alma mater, Harvard, to deliver the 1952-53 school year Charles Eliot Norton Lectures, a series of six presentations.  In the first lecture, Cummings speaks of his childhood: “…I was welcomed as no son of any king and queen was ever welcomed.”  To be the child of his parents was, for Edward Estlin Cummings, “…my joyous fate and my supreme fortune.”

But today is Mother’s Day 2017.  Given the invitation to reflect on mothering in all the many forms we require it, hunger for it, and give it, so that our body and soul may thrive, here is a story Cummings told about his mother:

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Essays Everything Else
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Young at Love II

Posted by Steve Roberts on
 June 28, 2015
  ·  1 Comment

In honor of the 2015 Supreme Court decision on gay marriage, an essay from 2009:

Vermont’s historic legislative affirmation of gay marriage is a beautiful thing.  But that doesn’t stop me from rolling my eyes.  That we debate the appropriateness of the heart’s elemental impulse to join with one’s beloved suggests just how young we are in the scheme of human evolution.  Heck, a turnip should be able to marry a basketball, if such an act increases the world’s love supply.

Now there’s a dangerous possibility.

What if boosting the planet’s woo-woo quotient were indeed the criterion to marry––or, more significantly, to stay married.  Given our nation’s divorce rate (50 percent, give or take), a whole bunch of us might not make the cut.

Just as we renew our driver’s license, we and our spouse would have our heart’s union assayed every so often.  Don’t laugh, we have the technology.  Check the book Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, or the 2009 TV drama “Lie to Me”.  And if we’re not generating good vibrations, our marriage license is suspended til we wise up.

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Essays Everything Else
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My Other Website

One Mans Dance logo with the M as legs with shoes

"The push to change the words “nigger” and “injun” in Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, because the so-called offensive nature of those terms might limit today’s readership and appreciation of that literary classic, is a wonderful opportunity to reflect on how we avoid taking responsibility for our feelings––and therefore miss the chance to become more awake, more whole, more useful friends to one another."

The Essay: The Gold in Niggers and Injuns