November 01, 2019

Being a Student of Silence

November 01, 2019/ Jeanne Denney

Each day as teachers we can seize an opportunity for the miraculous. We can find the most challenging, irksome student in our class in our mind and heart and befriend them. Before entering the classroom, perhaps we can imagine them sleeping before us as an old person, or a newborn without language or identity, without the problems we know so well. Perhaps we find the opportunity to have a silent conversation with them in this most primordial state, or just as we know them asking “What do you know that I don’t?”

The Coherent Community (And What I Wish Every Human Knew)

May 19, 2019/ Jeanne Denney

Strange times we are living in. With SO much worldwide division, unrest, dislocation and violence, thinking about either coherence OR community seems like a thing of history or an utter pipedream. I write this blog in American in the 21st Century. Is it even possible to achieve these things in our post-modern landscape that has been utterly redefined by technology?

May 07, 2019

The Breathing Relationship (And What I Wish Every Child Knew)

May 07, 2019/ Jeanne Denney

Lots of people think that I teach just about death, dying and grief. Well, I do. But the thing is, death taught me so much about all the rest of life, and almost every natural thing in it, that it was no longer possible to think about anything the same way.

October 22, 2017

Why is Death So Hard to Say? Reflecting on Life's Strongest Medicine

October 22, 2017/ Jeanne Denney

Maybe Death does not sell. That is…. until its teachings are so necessary that we can’t look away. In this moment of our great, collective, existential spasm, I offer this column so that our relationship with death may be healed and its teachings received. I bring up the ‘D’ words so that they can be restored to a place of dignity, and associated with words like lightness, ease, delight, and joy. Pain may be involved with death, but also even ecstasy and transformation. I write and teach that we can see death in its true and necessary place in the dance of life, and how deeply we each need its teaching. Now. More than ever.

October 02, 2017

Viewing My Country, "America" From Across The Pond

October 02, 2017/ Jeanne Denney

Dawn. Looking out over red tile roofs at the rolling hills and fields of southern Czechoslovakia from a solid table in a simple spacious room that has, of course, been here for several hundred years. This house sits in a tiny village. I mean tiny: a church, a school and about 6 houses. The view is breathtaking as the fall colors begin. The view here is different in more ways than one, and I woke thinking about my country, “America”.

November 04, 2013

Does Life Have an Opposite? Moving With and Beyond Kairos

November 04, 2013/ Jeanne Denney

All things, if they are alive, transform. Meaning, there appear to be beginnings and endings in them. The Pendulum Blog is no exception. It has a parent: The Kairos Network Blog, where I, and others, wrote about End of Life Care experiences. But there has been a yearning to develop larger ideas about life, illness, birth and death further and more generally, so there is this new blog child. Don’t all healthy children go way beyond the limits of a parent? Here are some of my musings about how this new blog came into being as I wholeheartedly invite you into it.