Melinda Emily Thomas

Category: Shift in Perspective

  • What the Jedi Get Wrong

    Master Yoda says, “Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny.” I say, How you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny. As much as I adore Star Wars, the one thing about the Jedi that bothers me is their refusal to create space within themselves…

  • Patience, Young Padawan

    “Patience you must have, my young Padawan,” says Yoda to Luke Skywalker. When I say this to Cole he doesn’t understand the Star Wars reference. Or patience for that matter. I’m not convinced I understand patience either. Patience is “the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, trouble, or suffering without getting angry or upset.” I do a decent…

  • The Mountain is Detail: The Tension of Faith and Vision

    A friend who spent most of his life in the mountains and now lives in the Piedmont recently said to me, “My only beef with North Carolina is the tree canopy. You can’t look out over things.” He has a point. In New Mexico, you can see everything. The land is BIG. The sky is…

  • Pilgrimage of Heart and Bone

    “One and one-half wandering Jews, free to wander wherever they choose. Are traveling together in the Sangre de Christo, The Blood of Christ Mountains, of New Mexico. On the last leg of a journey they started a long time ago. The arc of a love affair. Rainbows in the high desert air. Mountain passes slipping into stone. Hearts and bones. Hearts…

  • Plastic Fruits

    “Your proper concern is alone the action of duty, not the fruits of the action. Cast then away all desire and fear for the fruits, and perform your duty.” ~ The Bhagavad Gita I have a tendency to grumble, to get cynical, to be in anxiety and fear and tell myself the story that I’ve…

  • Familiar Grace

    Three days into my family’s yearly vacation at Kanuga Conference Center in Hendersonville I noticed I was in the mountains. At the same place we go every summer. The same cabin, the same embracing forest, the same dear friends, the same food cooked with too much oil. Why did it take me so long to…