Author: Colleen Windham-Hughes

• December 30, 2022

  Receiving the world as a gift / Being the world together

  I am still learning to receive the world as a gift. This work is undertaken amidst truths of so much pain and suffering—grief and loneliness, death and division, wars and inequalities. To affirm the world as a gift, even part of it, in circumstances such as these might seem irresponsible, indulgent, irrational, disconnected. And yet,…
• December 23, 2022

  Tending the world with yes (without forgetting well-placed no)

  Not every “yes” is good, nor every “no” bad. What is true is that both of these words transmit power to shape the world. No has important work to do to interrupt injustice, to end oppression, to prevent exploitation. Sometimes no sets a boundary in the wrong place—as though the world can go on without…
• December 16, 2022

  Exam Day Poetry

  Sometimes, when I’m supposed to be working, only poetry comes out. It happens with stunning regularity on exam days. Looking out at students I am so often overcome by love and awareness of their suffering. Through these multiple pandemics I have come to embrace writing poetry as a practice of compassion. Exam Day I I…