For most of my professional life—as a chaplain, mindfulness educator, and contemplative photographer—I’ve taught about the importance of cultivating gratitude. I’ve spoken often about building what I like to call a “gratitude neural pathway”—the idea that, over time, a steady practice of noticing what is good and given can soften the sharp edges of anxiety. People are usually quite receptive to this. Which leads me to wonder… What the hell is going on with these damn birds?

Each conflict carries its own name, its own justifications. But beneath the surface, there is often a familiar human story unfolding: the pull toward certainty, the seduction of righteousness, the ease with which fear hardens into cruelty, and crowds become convinced of their virtue. These dynamics are not confined to distant battlefields. They can surface anywhere—in the rhetoric of nations, in the unrest of cities, even in the quieter, more insidious spaces of online exchange.

This small angel offers a quiet, insistent lesson: it is not our hardness that saves us, but our capacity to weep—because in allowing ourselves to feel the sorrow of the world, we keep alive the tender, human part of us that still cares, still responds, and still hopes for something more.

We trade play for productivity, curiosity for concern, creativity for obligation. We begin to measure our lives by output rather than aliveness. And yet, the memory remains—those long afternoons of childhood when time opened, imagination took over, and joy required no justification. 

We are living through a kind of shared darkness—the violence and suffering unfolding in the Middle East, and an economy that continues to weigh heavily on the middle class and the working poor. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, to shut down, to look away.

About fifteen years ago, I spent a week at Zen Mountain Monastery, a Zen Buddhist monastery tucked into the Catskill Mountains in Mount Tremper, New York. The monastery is part of the Mountains and Rivers Order in the Soto Zen tradition, where meditation, simplicity, and mindful work are understood as expressions of awakening. In this tradition, ordinary activities—walking, cleaning, cooking—are practiced with the same attention as seated meditation.

When we try to be original, we often move away from direct experience. But when we simply attend—when we slow down enough to actually see—something authentic begins to appear. Not because we created it, but because we allowed it. Originality, in this sense, is not something we produce. It is what arises when we are fully present.

This four-day contemplative photography retreat is an immersion in sacred seeing. Drawing from the contemplative photography tradition of Miksang (“good eye”), the ancient Christian practice of Visio Divina, and the reflective discipline of photopoetry, we gather at Holy Cross Monastery on the banks of the Hudson River to practice seeing with clarity and devotion.

Each time I step back from CNN, MSNBC, and the restless chorus of news feeds, a quiet truth rises to the surface. What so often parades as power—conservative, moderate, progressive alike—carries the scent of exhaustion. The louder the claim, the more frantic the gesture, the more clearly its hollowness reveals itself. Noise masquerades as authority; force pretends to be strength.

In Minnesota this month, communities have been grieving the deaths of Renée Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old intensive care nurse—two lives lost in the long, trembling shadow cast by fear, force, and confusion. Their names are spoken in vigils and carried on signs, not as symbols, but as reminders: real people, real families, real absences that will not be filled.

Again and again, when a society grows too accustomed to its own compromises, the young become its conscience.

When two opposing forces meet—whether on the streets of Minneapolis or on the floor of the House of Representatives—the one who has no enemy carries a different kind of strength. Not louder. Not harder. But deeper.

Is there something to be said about our better angels and our yearly obsession with college football bowl season—this grand American ritual where we rejoice in victory and secretly (or not so secretly) delight in the downfall of our perceived enemies?

Hafiz once wrote, “I wish I could show you when you are lonely or in darkness the astonishing light of your own being.”

And on days when the news leaves me despairing—overwhelmed by noise, cruelty, or the general unraveling of things—my embarrassingly large library becomes a kind of monk’s cell—spare, sheltering, and steady. Books whisper their soft reminder: Not all is broken—there is still what is luminous, brave, and wise. Press on.

The constant churn of the news can numb us into abstraction — statistics, polls, slogans — until we forget that behind every headline is a human being.

Each photograph becomes a kind of loving-kindness practice—a record of the moment when the world reached out, and we were awake enough to receive it.

True leaders don’t stand on their tiptoes. They don’t shout or seek applause. They lift others up, share the credit, and move quietly through the world with purpose. In the language of the Tao, such leaders embody power that serves rather than controls.

Art is not a privilege of the gifted.
It is our first language—
spoken long before words,
through rhythm, color, gesture,
through the hands reaching,
the heart responding.

Returning after a brief away,
never sweeter—
the familiar waits,
welcoming, sane,
the quiet holds me close.