Category Archives: Commentary

A long-time friend wrote a few pages about his years in the High Sierra. The following is a summary of his late evening thoughts before the next day of hiking. Fears Beyond the edge of wonderment there’s always a wisp … Continue reading →

You move it with your spiritual hands to the ground beside you. Though it stays heavy, you are free to walk away. Forgiveness isn’t magic. It doesn’t erase what happened. It doesn’t wave a wand and make the weight disappear. … Continue reading →

A snippet on the radio, out of context, where someone declared an object completely useless. It caused me to ponder. Things that are made, are generally made for a purpose, thereby the objects are given the label “useful”. Often, the … Continue reading →

Preface We speak of learning as a path, as if it were a road that leads to a finished place. Edge Theory of Learning refuses that map. It says: the center is where things go to sleep. Stay at the … Continue reading →

I was pondering time spent since I was 16. 60 years is a reasonably large chunk of time and activity. Naturally this is not linear, but overlapping, most times twice, sometimes three or four. I quickly came up with an … Continue reading →

I’ve been thinking about IMHO—“In My Humble Opinion.” At first glance, it seems harmless. Modest. Polite. But the more I sit with it, the more I see it’s not always honest. Especially not the “humble” part. Because let’s face it—humility’s … Continue reading →

Today I Was Naked Posted on March 16, 2021 by johndiestler At my age this would not be a pretty sight. Maybe at any age. But I’m not talking about clothing, I’m talking about leaving the house without my cellphone. Now if you … Continue reading →

Jan Assmann, Donald Redford, Israel Finkelstein, Neil Asher Silberman, Richard Elliott Friedman, and Israel Knohl—they’ve all circled around the same fire: trying to piece together the old stories. Not the written ones, but the ones scattered. The ones left behind … Continue reading →

Part IV: Echoes of Earth Time passed, though no one was certain how to count it. The twin suns marked the days unevenly. Their orbits overlapped, then diverged. A single cycle of light and dark was roughly twenty hours, but … Continue reading →

Part III: The Green Sky The sky was wrong. That was the first thing Mia couldn’t shake. It wasn’t just the color—though the soft green hue unsettled something deep in her. It was the light itself. It filtered through the … Continue reading →