I recently reread for the third or fourth time Ann Hood's Do Not Go Gentle, the memoir she wrote before and after her father's death about her search for miracles. In a blurb on the back cover, the author Barbara Lazear Ascher writes, "Ann Hood makes us wake up to the miracles that we often overlook in our search for the Big Miracles. You finish this book, look up, and see your world in a new light. A better, more promising light."

The book and Ascher's quote were on my mind at 6:30 this morning when I set out for my run. As I stepped out the kitchen door I saw, in the middle of our macadam drive, a yellow and black turtle making its way across the tarred expanse. I had never seen one exactly like it and drew close to examine it. Just then, my neighbor Jay, a marathoner, returned from his morning run (we are early risers in this neighborhood) and I called him over.

"What kind do you think it is?" I asked.

"I don't know. It's too big to be a painted turtle. I think it may be called a sun turtle."

That made sense. The design on the top of the shell looked like sunbursts against a black field. Jay picked it up and we looked at the undershell, patterned black, like river stones. We were now crouched on our haunches like two school-yard children and we stayed that way for several minutes, staring at the turtle. How did it get here? we wondered. Where was it going? What, if anything, did it need from us? What was its natural habitat? How were its beautiful markings meant to serve as camouflage?

Even after Jay left, I stayed there with it, fascinated by the cowl of reptilian skin around its head, the beautiful black and yellow pattern on its shell, the way it withdrew into itself when I reached for it, its claws that suggested something prehistoric. Finally I left for my run. When I returned, the turtle had moved on and was now in the middle of our street. I helped it to the other side and then went straight to my office where I googled turtles, intent on finding exactly which kind had found its way into my life this morning.

Finally, I located it. Ornate Box Turtle, I read.  4 - 5  inches long with a dark brown or black shell decorated with bright yellow lines that radiate to form a starburst pattern. It is timid and retreats into its shell when approached and is ectothermic, meaning that its body temperature is affected by the environmental temperature which, in turn, affects its movements. It uses its habitat to control its body temperature, seeking shade in shrubs during extremely hot weather.

Then the info got really interesting. The Ornate Box Turtle has a small range limited to the Great Plains. The Great Plains. Yet, here it was on my driveway on Cape Cod, stopping me in my tracks with awe and delight. Just as Ann Hood relates in her memoir how scientists explain away cancer cures previously deemed miraculous, a more pragmatic person might explain this easily. Perhaps it was an aquarium pet released by a child granting it freedom. But I was more of a mind to find the extraordinary in this creature. 

 Later when solving the daily crossword puzzle, I inked in the answer to one of the clues: terrapin. Was this no more than an amusing coincidence? Or was it a nudge to remember the turtle and to appreciate ordinary miracles?

The third entry for "miracle" in my dictionary defines the word as "a wonder, a marvel."   Perhaps the apppearance of the Ornate Box Turtle in my drive was sent to remind me to keep awake a sense of wonder, of marvel, in my everyday life, to see the world, as Ascher wrote in her cover quote, in a new and more promising light.

Early yesterday morning, I drove into town here in central Virginia to the gas station/KwickMart to pick up a copy of the New York Times but when I got there, there were none on the stand. A man asked the counter clerk about it and I caught something about "Never were delivered."  

"Did he say the Times wasn't delivered today?" I asked the older and clearly disgruntled customer who had inquired. "No. No paper," he said. "I live on the edge of the world," and he disappeared out to the parking lot, his connection with the wider world beyond these borders unsatisfied. 

Last week after dinner, three of the residents shared their work after dinner. Ami read from her short stories and Noah played a CD of two compositions. Then David and Noah gave us an evening of  jazz on piano and trumpet. A rich night and one of the great benefits of being here with twenty-four other artists.

When Noah was talking about one particular piece he'd written, he said it was a dialogue between two instruments and about missed connections and I was struck by the theme and how it was echoed in the novel I am here writing. And then I started to think about how the great yearning of the human soul is to connect with something other than itself whether that something be a person, a god, or nature. It is there in all of us: the imperative to connect. That is why each of us are here in Virginia in separate studios painting and sculpting and writing. We are attempting to connect to a world beyond our personal borders- to share our truths and visions as translated through art: Ami and me with fiction, Noah and Roth with music, David, Barbara, Karen and Bonnie with art, Kristin, Sandell and Howie with memoir, Blas with poetry. So simple and direct.

And yet. And yet.

I am often struck by the paradox that if, as I believe, one of our most profound desires is to deeply relate, why then do we keep screwing it up, missing the connection - like the instruments in Noah's composition. 

Today is a Silent Monday and, as it has for nearly twenty years on these quiet hours set aside for stillness, the pace of my life has slowed and I've become aware of the contrast with other days, the demands of ordinary life so pressing on those days, demands that often give rise to free-floating anxiety as I try to fit it all in, to make deadlines and meetings and engagements and attack the to-do list that looms large.

 It is when I am busiest that I most welcome the space of a silent day.  

Last month, I was interviewed by on a radio program in Bahrain and the host, Alia Almoayed, had asked me to speak about silence. But as the program began I couldn't help but think of her listeners and wondered if, on a day of great upheaval as the riots were begining, they would find relevance in a conversation about silence. (Before we'd begun the on-air part of our interview, Alia told me there were tanks in the streets, the first time in her life she'd ever witnessed anything like that.) And then I remembered how, at difficult times in my own life, silence has always called me home and calmed me. On these Mondays, again and again, it has showed me that what is most needed when we are in the midst of a crisis - whether it be physical, political, emotional, spiritual or financial - is to slow down and become quiet, to allow the space silence affords to expand. Perhaps it was no conicidence that it was exactly on the day the rioting began a half a world away, I was presented with this opportunity. 

If you are like me, too often, in the face of challenges, you tend to react instead of reflect. Too often, we allow our anxieties and fears to propel us into action instead of withdrawing, even briefly, into a sacred space where wisdom can be heard. For centuries, theologians, philosophers, poets and sages have taught us that it is in this space that truths can surface, understandings expand,and wisdom arise. 

As the interview with Alia continued, I imagined that for a few moments, there was stillness, not only in the streets of Bahrain,but across the planet. I pictured the din of human commerce and conflict momentarily stilled as silence cast light in each dark hour and every troubled heart.

Last month, on a cold and windy morning, we drove to Cambridge to attend the memorial services for a friend and former squadron mate of Hillary's.The last time we'd seen Tony was several years ago when he came to a book signing I was doing. After the event we chatted briefly, getting caught up on family and what we'd been doing since the last time we'd met.

I remember very little of the specifics of that conversation. Just that it had been good to see him. I certainly don't remember our parting words. Probably the usual. Thanks for coming. It's good to see you. Take care.

I thought there would be other times we'd see him.  What would I have said to him if I'd known that was the last time I'd see him. How differently would we have parted? What would our last words have been?

How would our lives and relationships be different if each time we parted, we were conscious of not leaving anything unsaid, especially how much others mean in our lives?

Even having lost family members and friends unexpectedly to disease, accidents, suicides, too often we wrap ourselves in a mist of denial, perhaps because the reality that our days are finite and the knowledge that we can't know when they will end feel too hard and heavy to bear consciously day to day.     

Until we lose a friend, like Tony, and we again become aware of the temporary nature of existance and the fragility of our lives. And we vow to leave nothing unsaid. And sometimes, like our friend Peter, we act on this promise.

We last saw Peter at an Oyster Bake in November. When he arrived, he embraced Hillary and told him that he loved him. He then explained that in the last year several of his friends had died and he realized he hadn't told them how much they had meant to him, how he had loved them, and now he now had promised himself he wouldn't leave these things unspoken.

I was thinking about Peter as we sat in the Cambridge church and listened to Tony's sons and grandchildren speak from the pulpit. How I wish our last words to Tony were of how we admired him, of what he had meant to us, of what a good and loyal friend he had been. Now we were left with saying these things to his widow and his sons. 

Simple words. I love you. I am grateful you are in my life. You inspire me. I'm sorry. Because of you, my life is enriched.

 Simple but too important to be left unsaid.  

Today is a silent Monday for me and so I am slowed, quieted, and brought to attention to the moments of my life in a way I am not on speaking days. Over the years I have found that in silence I am attentive especially to the conversations of others as well as to the on-going ones in my head. And I am often reminded of the Zen directive for speech: "Is it true? Is it kind? Is it necessary?"

When I heed them, these questions have served me well over the years - it is so easy to get into trouble with our words, to hurt others, to create misunderstandings, to create rifts, to exhaust ourselves.

"Is it true?" I take that to mean, "Am I speaking my truth?" well aware that my truth is not necessarily yours. We don't have to listen to politicians arguing their viewpoints on taxes or the environment or to family members recalling past clan gatherings to know that many different truths can co-exist simultaneously. I suppose the great goal is to speak our own truth while allowing for the possiblity of another's, and keeping in mind the words of a wise man I once knew, "Truth without kindness is cruelty." Which brings us to the next question. 

"Is it kind?" Another great directive that has kept me quiet and out of trouble more times than I'd like to admit (Although another friend once told me that thinking a thing has the same effect as saying it- an idea that brings me to my knees and makes me seriously consider a lobotomy). Still, I try. Was it Gandhi who said, "Kindness is my religion."?   I know for certain the world would be better with more kindness in it.

"Is it necessary?" This is the tough nut for me. On silent days especially, I am conscious of how much of what we say is unnecessary. But then I wonder by what scale. Today, for instance, I would love to talk to Hillary about last night's Patriots game.  Certainly not a crucial conversation but one that could  connect us and bring us pleasure, for just as I've learned that silence can be a bridge that creates deep connection, so can words, even seemingly idle ones about football games. Intimacy comes in  many guises.

Being attentive to what is necessary - not only in our speech but in what we bring into our lives - is a good exercise, as is anything that creates mindfulness.

So the conversation about the Patriots game will have to wait until tomorrow. And I wonder if it will seem as necessary then.

Last month, I led a day-long workshop/retreat on silence and creativity at the Chicago Botanic Gardens which seemed wonderfully appropriate since when writing LISTENING BELOW THE NOISE, I'd used Frances Hodgson Burnett's book THE SECRET GARDEN as a metaphor for the practice of silence.  

As part of the day, each participant spent several hours exploring the grounds on a silent walking meditation. Later, when they returned to the conference room, they said how different the experience had been from their ordinary visits. Many said that usually when they visited the Gardens, they focused on conversations with friends or on speed walking for exercise, but that day, silence slowed them down and they noticed things they had never seen before. They had experienced one of the great gifts of silence. It calls us to the present moment and teaches us to pay attention. And when we do that, there are lessons all around.  

That day, on my walk I was struck by a moment in the Japanese Gardens. These are beautiful spaces, serene beyond measure, as you  might imagine, and extensive - several individual gardens, really, one of which was an island in a pond. Another, the Dry Garden, held everygreens pruned into bonsai growing in an expanse of sand that had been carefully groomed by a rake, the tines forming wave-like patterns. All was enclosed within ropes. At the entrance there was a rock tied with black string. An adjacent sign informed visiters that this was sacred space and that in Japan, such a rock signified "Stop. Go no further," much like the red octagonal Stop sign in the United States.

Since the day of the workshop, I've thought a lot about that string-tied rock. Establishing boundaries, even necessary ones, can be tricky and misunderstood. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have a universal symbol we could put outside our own doors when we felt the need for solitude, when we felt the need to create a sacred space in our own lives?

 What would your symbol look like?

The good news is that there are two fabulous, go-for-broke, forget-the diet French bakeries on Cape Cod.  The bad news is that there are two fabulous, go-for-broke, forget-the-diet French bakeries on Cape Cod. Pain D'Avignon in Hyannis and PB Boulangerie and Cafe in Wellfleet.

The first time I went to the Wellfleet bakery I intended to try one croissant. A few minutes later, I  walked out with $27.00 worth of baked goods. It takes a will stronger than mine to by-pass the cheese and bacon country loaf or the raisin and walnut. The apple croissant had my name all over it. And that was just the beginning. To put this splurge in prospective, I rarely buy bread, never mind eat it. On the way home I said to my friend Jebba, "It's a good thing that place is 25 miles away. It would be dangerous to have it in the same town."

Alas, distance has not proved a deterrant.

Like a person obsessed, I find myself inventing errands that will get me heading up-Cape or down-Cape and bring me near either bakery where I happily stand in line to purchase their goods.Twice in the past week I've driven to Hyannis to have the ham and cheese croissant at Pain D'Avignon.

"Stay away from that bakery," my stellar assistant Kate e-mailed me earlier today. To no avail. This morning's indulgence was a croque monsieur in Wellfleet. While there I picked up two more loaves of bread since my favorite breakfast at home is now a fresh egg from Hillary's hens poached on a slice of lightly toasted bacon and cheese loaf. A marriage of flavors to dream of.

Part of this obsession no doubt is the memories stirred of the meals I've eaten in France, a country I love and yearn to return to. But a large part, too, is the quality of the food offered. Real food, not factory produced or created from a mix comprised of ingredients I can neither spell nor pronounce. It is not a coincidence that both bakeries have fiercely loyal customers who spread the word like gospel.

 This has gotten me thinking about what leads to success whether we're considering a food purveyer or a novelist. Granted, luck always plays a role, but the commonalities of quality, whether it be in baking or writing, are attention to and passion for the craft.

Cape Cod spring is an oxymoron.

I've lived on Cape Cod for more than forty years and never before have I witnessed a spring like the one we're having this year. Long time residents know it's a mistake to pack away winter clothes before mid-June. (When they were young, more often than not my children wore parkas when they marched in Chatham's Memorial Day parade.) Experienced gardeners know that to set out peppers and other tender annuals before the third week of June is to court frost-killed plants. 

But this year flowers are blooming a full month ahead of schedule. Lilacs, their branches traditionally gathered in Mason jars this holiday weekend to grace cemetery graves, are already well pass their peak. At the beach at the end of my street, people swim in Nantucket Sound, and daily I sight convertibles with tops rolled down. Temperatures have hovered in the 70s for days and occasionally have risen to the 80s.   

The other day I overheard someone at the gardening center say, "Things are so early this year, I wonder what will happen when August comes." Another customer responded, "I don't care what happens in August. I am loving this weather."

Like plants springing to life after a cold, harsh spell, I, too, feel alive. My energy level spikes. Years fall away. Dreams, in hibernation all winter, waken and recharge me.

Is there any season more intoxicating that spring?

When I walk out to retrieve the morning paper at the end of the drive, the world sings with the song of bees and birds. Already the perennial beds are a riot of colors. I am besotted with it all, but especially with the apricot poppies, their frilled and heavy heads nodding in the breeze. In a week or two, their brief blossoming will be at an end and their petals will confetti the garden soil. The temporal nature of their stay only increases my appreciation and awe. Just as it does when I realize the transitional nature of our own planet walk.

 "I feel so grateful," I said to my friend Margaret the other day. "Sometimes I think it's a wonder we don't walk around on our knees all day in gratitude. Don't you?" "No," she laughed. "I think there's a reason God gave us feet." 

Spring arrives with its eternal message of resurrection and rebirth, and amid the turmoil of politics and economics and news of friends' illness and deaths and smaller human concerns, I am reminded of the wonder and majesty of life.

Walking or kneeling, I am moved to a prayer of gratitude,

"You should be on Oprah."

If I had a penny for every time....

Oh. Okay. Let me just jot that right down on my to-do list, I want to respond to these supportive friends and readers - and readers who are friends - who regularly offer this suggestion, some of whom have actually initiated a write-in campaign to get me on the show. As if it were that easy. 

Which reminds me of something one of my fellow faculty members at the Hawaii Writers Conference said last summer. "Want to be on Oprah?" Bill Bernhardt asked those who attended his talk. "Write this number down." Everyone dutifully took out pens and paper. "One-eight-hundred dial-a-prayer," he said.

For years now, writers (and publicists and editors and publishers working on their behalf) have maneuvered to be on Oprah, hoping to be in the select minority for whom the call from Harpo Productions comes.

Would I like to be on Oprah? Absolutely. No cranial strain in answering that quesion. Would I shout the news, stopping just short of hiring a plane to float a banner over Fenway Park? No doubt. Would I post it on FaceBook? You bet. Do I believe it would change my life? No. 

I have eight friends who have been Oprah's featured guests, five of whom have had their novels selected for her book club. Has it changed their lives in that way we mean when we say something has absolutely altered our life's trajectory?  As far as I can observe, it hasn't. 

What it did provide for these friends was a wider audience for their work, more name recognition and an upward tick in finances and book sales - what one of them called getting the Oprah Grant. But as time when on, their lives continued more or less as they had before. Once the grant ran out, their struggles to pay bills, write and sell books, and gain readers continued. On-going battles in their personal lives - the ones we all struggle with, weight loss and relationships and juggling daily demands - picked up where they'd been before the flight to Chicago.

And still this myth persevers, the belief that one event - selling a novel and getting it published, making the NYTimes best seller list, having our books made into movies, winning big awards - will alter our days in an essential way, And so we continue to confuse aspirations with false expectations. We hang our hopes on something dangling out there just beyond our reach. The brass ring on life's merry-go-round. Students sign on for writing classes holding a pen in one hand and in their minds the dream so particularly American that publishing a book or scripting a screenplay will lead to fame and fortune. And then we'll know the satisfaction of having every classmate in the eighth grade who was mean, every person who was rejecting or abandoning or hurtful brought to their knees in regret and remorse. 

Last fall one of the producers for Harpo Productions called to talk about "Listening Below the Noise" and explore the possibility of my being on that Friday's show to talk about the practice of silence and how it has transformed my life. She said they didn't decide on the show until Wednesday but wanted to know if I could be available and would like to do it (Well, hello, let me just think about that for a nanosecond!). She then apologized for not being able to give me an answer until later in the week. I was dazed, the way I imagine many are when they receive "The Call." I began to dream the big dreams.I angsted over what I'd wear and if I should get my hair cut. When the producer called on Wednesday with the news that the show was going to be about the phenomenon of Twitter with Ashton Kutcher as the guest (and could anything be more removed from silence?), I felt the sting of disappointment. The astonishing thing was that it was only momentary. Some saner part of my brain prevailed and I got it that my life's happiness and worth wasn't based on appearing on Oprah.

Do you remember a few years back when an essay was going around in which the writer asked us to remember the last five Super Bowl winners, the last ten actors who won the Academy Award, the singer who won American Idol three years ago? Most people couldn't. (For every Susan Boyle, there are thousands of winners whose names are forgotten quickly.) The same essayist asked us to remember the name of our first grade teacher. That name surfaced easily for most people. Yet how easy it is in a culture that prizes fame to be seduced away from what really matters.

Getting a book or movie contract, appearing on high profile talk shows, these things can impact our lives of course, but they do not transform us in that fundamental way that leads to sustained happiness or contentment. Not even winning the mega millions does that as the dozens of follow-up stories about lottery winners reveal. 

There are events - death, catastrophic illness - that can permanantly mark us - but most of life's transformations are an inside job. That's helpful to remember when Oprah calls. Or when she doesn't.

People here on the Cape - and in a good portion of the northeast - are hunkering down and preparing for another storm this morning. Last night, before even a distant sighting of the first flake, the news stations started listing school closings for today. Pictures of the landscape in DC flashed across the screen. The capital still hasn't cleared out from the previous snowfall and there is talk of sledding on the White House lawn. Snow seems to have temporarioy muted political retoric, if not shut it down.

The last big storm we had here was the weekend before Christmas when we had 16 inches. Stores shut down. Except for plows, streets were empty. Our home, cloaked in a blanket of snow, seemed much cozier and tighter and quieter then usual even though outside the temperatures hung in the teens. "It's because all the cracks around the doors and windows and skylights are sealed," Hillary said. "Snow insulates."

Like silence, I thought.

I have always been struck by how much silent Mondays feel like the snow days I experienced in childhood. I loved snow days. Still do. Each one seems a gift, a vessel for holding treasures of peace, receptivity and quiet. Everything slows down, with no demands, no "push." Insulated from the noise of the world, the day is filled with mysterious promise. 

My father, a farmer, used to tell me that a spring snow was nature's fertilizer because it brought nitrogen to the earth. So it seems, is silence a fertilizer for the soil of my soul. Each silence day brings its own gifts.

The German philosopher Max Picard wrote extensively about our need for silence and the cost of a world without it. "In winter silence is visible," he wrote. "Snow is silence become visible."

 So I sit here in my studio and wait for the quieting snow, for visible silence.