The Baby

Adaptation

Dear journal, 

There is a tension that comes with change that no amount of preparation seems to resolve. It sits somewhere between conviction and doubt, between what has been built and what must now be left behind. I have lived long enough in one place to mistake familiarity for permanence, to believe that the work I was doing might be enough to carry me forward on its own.

It is not.

Sixteen years is long enough for a place to shape you. Long enough to learn its rhythms, to anticipate its needs, to understand without needing to explain. I did not simply work there. I became a version of myself that only that place could produce.

And now I am leaving.

For years, I resisted the idea that my experience did not translate. It felt dismissive of the students, of the outcomes, of the long arc of work that rarely fits within a single school year. But systems do not evaluate impact the way individuals experience it. They measure what they can see, and for too long, my work existed just outside that line of sight.

So I am left with a choice that is less dramatic than it sounds, but no less real.

Charles Darwin wrote, “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” I find myself returning to that idea now, not as a slogan, but as a kind of recalibration. Adaptation is not surrender. It is a recognition that survival, professional or otherwise, depends on the ability to respond to the environment as it is, not as I wish it to be.

And so I am adapting.

Yesterday, a former student came by. She had not finished when she was with me. Life had intervened: work, a child, time moving in directions that do not align with school schedules. But she came back to tell me she had passed the HiSET. She showed me pictures of her child, talked about others who had not made it, and stood there as living evidence that the work we did was never confined to a single year or even a single program.

When she left, I felt something I had not fully anticipated.

Not regret. Not even doubt. Something closer to grief.

Because moments like that are not transferable. They are tied to place, to time, to a specific kind of work that unfolds slowly and often invisibly. They are reminders that the timelines that matter most in this work rarely align with the timelines that institutions measure.

And yet, I cannot stay.

I am reminded of a line from The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran: “It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.” That is closer to what this feels like. This is not a simple transition. It is not a professional adjustment that can be neatly explained. It is the slow and deliberate removal of something that has grown into who I am.

Gibran writes elsewhere, “Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.” There is a kind of clarity in that. What I feel in leaving is not simply loss, but the discomfort of being opened, of seeing more clearly what this work has been and what it has asked of me. The grief is not separate from the growth; it is evidence of it.

And there is something else. “And ever has it been known that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” It would be easy to speak about this transition in practical terms. It would be easy to frame it as a step forward, a necessary move, a strategic decision. But that would miss the truth of it. I understand the depth of what this place has meant to me precisely because I am leaving it.

What I am leaving cannot be taken with me in any tangible way. The place, the students, the particular shape of that work, they remain where they are. But something of it endures. Not in form, but in understanding. In the way I see students. In the way I recognize struggle. In the quiet belief that redemption is always possible, even when it does not happen on a specific schedule.

If that is true, then this is not an ending in the way I once thought. It is a continuation, carried differently. “Life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.” The work does not disappear simply because the setting changes. It adapts. It finds new ground.

The question is no longer whether I will change, but what might grow because I am willing to.

Always, 

Dave 

After the Storm

Kingdom Come: The Final Victory (Left Behind #13)

Meditation (2026)

Spring does not arrive all at once. It accumulates.

At first, it is only a suggestion. It is the faintest shift in color, a softening of air as it grows heavy with rain, the quiet insistence of something beginning beneath the surface. Then, almost without notice, the world gives itself over to green. Not a single green, but a proliferation: the sharp green of new grass, the deeper green of maturing leaves, the almost luminous green that appears only for a brief moment before settling into something more stable. In this painting, that moment has been held in suspension. The tree does not simply exist; it overflows.

What I find most compelling in this work is that sense of abundance. The blossoms, rendered as countless small marks, create a density that feels less like decoration and more like emergence. Nothing here is singular. Everything participates. It mirrors what I see around me now. The roses in my yard are blooming again. The grass, once dormant, grows with a quiet urgency. Leaves, which only weeks ago were absent, now assert themselves fully. Even the storms, which move through with force, seem to carry within them the conditions for what follows. They pass, enriching the land, and life comes forth.

There is a rhythm to this that feels both external and internal. Spring is not only something I observe; it is something I experience. And in that experience, I begin to understand the painting less as a landscape and more as a state of mind.

The figure beneath the tree sits at the center of this abundance, but does not disrupt it. He does not reach toward it or attempt to possess it. He simply remains. His stillness stands in contrast to the generative energy that surrounds him, yet it does not oppose it. Instead, it feels aligned, as though his posture participates in the same cycle of renewal that animates the landscape.

This is where the painting intersects most directly with my own life.

I no longer pray in the way I was taught as a child. The language of petition, the act of asking something beyond myself to intervene, no longer resonates. There was a time when prayer meant speaking outward, directing words toward a presence I believed to be listening. In the absence of that belief, I initially understood this as a loss. If there is no one to hear, then what remains of prayer?

What I have found, however, is not absence but reconfiguration.

Meditation, in its various forms, has become a kind of renewal that parallels the seasonal rhythms I see in the world around me. It is not about asking, but about clearing. Not about being answered, but about becoming receptive. Practices such as zazen, centering prayer, the Rosary, forest bathing, and walking meditation differ in form, but converge in intention. Each creates a space in which the accumulation of thought can settle, allowing a different kind of awareness to emerge.

In this sense, meditation functions much like spring itself. It does not impose something new so much as it reveals what is already present. Beneath the layers of distraction, habit, and constant movement, there is a quieter field of experience. It is one that is not easily accessed in the momentum of daily life. Meditation, like the slow greening of the world, unfolds through repetition. It is not a singular act, but an ongoing process.

The painting captures this through its construction. The tree is not rendered through broad gestures, but through countless small marks. Each blossom is insignificant on its own, yet together they create a field of overwhelming presence. This accumulation mirrors the practice of meditation. A single moment of stillness may seem inconsequential, but over time, these moments gather. They create space. They alter perception.

There is also an important shift in orientation that accompanies this practice. In petitionary prayer, the focus is outward, directed toward a transcendent other. In meditation, the movement is both inward and outward simultaneously. It is inward in the sense of attending to breath, to thought, to the immediate experience of being. It is outward in the sense of becoming more attuned to the world as it is. The boundary between self and environment becomes less rigid.

The figure in the painting embodies this orientation. He faces the water, not the tree. The tree shelters him, but his attention extends beyond it, toward the horizon. There is no indication of striving, no visible goal. The boats in the distance suggest movement, journeys unfolding elsewhere, but he remains where he is. This stillness is not stagnation. It is a different mode of engagement.

I recognize in this posture something that has become increasingly important in my own life. There is a persistent pressure to move, to act, to produce. To measure time in terms of progress. Yet spring offers a counterpoint to this logic. Growth occurs, but not through force. It follows conditions. It emerges when it is ready. The tree does not rush its blossoms. The grass does not strain to grow. They respond to conditions created beyond what they control. To the orientation of the sun. To the rain. To the changing patters of the wind. 

Meditation, as I have come to practice it, is an attempt to respond rather than to control. It is an act of relinquishment, not in the sense of giving up, but in the sense of letting go of the constant impulse to direct experience. This does not mean passivity. It requires discipline: to sit, to return, to remain present even when the mind resists. But the discipline is oriented toward openness rather than achievement.

There is a quiet honesty in this. To sit in stillness is to encounter whatever arises without immediately seeking to change it. At times, this is uncomfortable. The mind does not easily settle. Thoughts persist. Attention drifts. Yet, like the gradual unfolding of spring, something shifts through repetition. The noise does not disappear, but it loses its dominance.

What remains is a heightened sensitivity to the moment.

This is perhaps the most significant form of renewal that meditation offers. Not a transformation into something different, but a return to something more immediate. The present moment, which is often obscured by anticipation or memory, becomes accessible again. And in that accessibility, there is a subtle but profound change. The world, which can feel abstract or distant, becomes tangible.

The painting holds this moment with a kind of quiet clarity. The abundance of green, the filtered light, the stillness of the figure, all of it converges into a single, sustained present. It does not suggest permanence. There is an implicit understanding that this moment will pass, that the blossoms will fade, that the season will shift. That spring will give way to summer and so on. But for now, there is fullness.

In my own life, I find that I often move too quickly through these moments. Spring arrives, but I am already oriented toward what comes next. The painting interrupts that forward motion. It invites me to remain here, to notice the greening of the world, to recognize it not as background but as event.

And in doing so, it reframes meditation not as an isolated practice, but as a way of inhabiting time.

To sit beneath the tree is not to withdraw from the world, but to enter into it more fully. To allow the accumulation of moments, the small, often unnoticed instances of awareness, to gather into something meaningful. Like the blossoms that form a canopy, these moments do not demand attention individually. But together, they create a field of presence.

Spring does not ask for belief. It does not require interpretation. It simply unfolds. Opening with each blossom. 

Meditation, in its own way, does the same each time we sit and gather the flowers of the moment.