love – Lofty Minded in Alaska

February 2026: A Snow Moon Letter

Dear Friends,

Since my last letter, I’ve received so many kind notes and in-person condolences. I’ve had phone messages and emails and a few hugs that cut through all the layers of talk and went straight to the heart. Something inside me must have known that I needed all of that, but now I know for sure that I did. To not feel alone, to not have to carry the heaviness of loss on my own, to know that grief is something we all share… it’s made me feel like I’ve got a place among you, and what we all need is to belong. So, thank you.

It’s an interesting thing that I’m doing, writing a letter to anyone who will read it, and I’m still trying to figure out why I feel compelled to do this. Maybe it’s an experiment in community. Maybe it’s just a free form way for me to write when I don’t always know what I want to say. Maybe it’s me reaching out a hand in invitation, saying, let’s do this thing together, let’s find something in common, let’s go wherever this takes us.

I don’t know why it took me so long to discover this, but in the last couple of years I’ve learned that I have a hard time looking people in the eye. I can have a conversation with just about anyone, and obviously I’m not afraid of sharing things about myself with others, but looking at someone else’s eyeballs kind of freaks me out. I watch people’s mouths when I talk to them and if I happen to make eye contact it almost stings. I immediately avert my gaze. Since becoming aware of this I’ve been working on looking at peoples’ eyes when I talk to them, but it’s not an easy thing for me to do. It feels like a fragility on my part. What is it I’m afraid of seeing? What is it that I’m afraid others might see in me?

There’s that whole notion of eyes being the window into another person’s soul, and I think there might be something to that, and that might just be what’s jarring to me about looking someone in the eye. When I make eye contact with another person, I sense that there’s an energetic connection, like a spark, and it startles me. Maybe I need to learn to stay in that uncomfortable space until it’s no longer uncomfortable. Maybe I need to learn to trust myself with that kind of energetic exchange because it feels kind of powerful. I’m curious to know if anyone else experiences this.

I think I’m going down this rabbit hole because writing these letters feels a lot like baring my soul, and yet it doesn’t freak me out. Maybe letter writing is my love language. Maybe it’s my attempt to make eye contact.

Anyhow, I hope there is something about these letters that makes you feel seen.

It’s been more than a couple of weeks now since that life-altering day I wrote about in my last letter. Without a dog, our house is quiet in a way it hasn’t been in the 35 years that Dean and I have been married. The temptation is to rush out and get another puppy but we’re trying to make ourselves wait a while. There are a few trips we’d like to take before we take on the responsibility of another dog, and this kind of quiet might actually be good for us to experience. At least that’s what we’re telling ourselves.

Also in the two weeks since I last wrote you, I’ve been to Florida and back. I’m still recovering from the trip and feeling a little raw from the mix of emotions that came from gathering with family to say goodbye to my nephew. After being with his mom and sisters and attending his memorial, I know more about him now than I knew before. The thing I heard over and over again from his family and friends is that Ellijah was a person who showed up for other people. When people needed him, he was there. It made me think about the people in my life who show up and it made me think about what it means to be a person who shows up.

I went to Florida because I needed to go, and somehow I thought that need was for my sister and her girls. In retrospect though, I needed to go for myself. I needed to remind myself that I belong to a family. We all started out in Colorado together, but over time we’ve scattered around the country. We’ve moved away from each other in non-geographic ways as well – politically, religiously, culturally – but when we were all in a room together I felt at home, and at peace. I didn’t know I needed that, but I did.

One highlight of the weekend was when we gathered for brunch the day after Ellijah’s memorial. Cousins, sisters, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, parents, grandparents, friends, brothers, aunts, uncles all together around one long table. The little boys ran around the table with their toy car and dinosaur, and my niece’s beautiful baby got passed around to anyone who wanted a turn holding her. The waitstaff at the restaurant were endlessly patient with us, and kind, and for a few hours we had the time to just be together. None of us took it for granted, because who knows how much time will pass before we’re all able to share space like that again.

It’s mysterious the way things work; that tragedies can bring about healing, that new and beautiful relationships can blossom after loss, that priorities can come into focus when your heart is broken. It’s true personally and I have to hope that it’s true collectively.

And how are you holding up? What are you doing to take care of yourself these days? Do you have any good books to recommend? Any podcasts or music that’s helping you get through the intensity of this particular moment in time? I started listening to The Overstory by Richard Powers when I was traveling. It’s been recommended to me more times than I can count but I put it off because I haven’t been drawn to reading much fiction over the past few years. Of course it’s as good as everyone said it is and the writing is a miracle. Maybe it will launch me back into a fiction reading phase again. I hope so.

We’re in the middle of a dreary weather pattern here with no sunshine icons at all in the ten day weather forecast. I’ll try to dig deep and find some of that inner light to get me through; lots of hot tea, yoga, jumping on the rebounder I bought last winter, and as many beach walks as I can fit in. It’s a good time for garden planning and tea packaging, and of course for writing. We’re halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox now and we’re gaining almost five minutes of daylight every day-even if it is behind a thick layer of clouds. Already our slow days of winter are feeling numbered, so I might as well embrace them.

Have I told you yet that I appreciate you reading these letters? I hope this one finds you engaged in something meaningful and encouraged about some aspect of your life. I hope it finds you rising above the intensity of current events. I hope it finds you well-cared-for and well-fed and at peace. But if you’re not feeling or doing your best, that’s okay, too. Don’t be hard on yourself. Let yourself rest. Know that I’m rooting for you.

Thank you for being out there and for reading my ramblings, and if you feel so inclined, I’d love to hear from you. And if this letter encourages you to reach out to someone else, that’d be cool too.

Take good care until next time.

With love,

Teresa

And just a few more things:

*I’d love to share these letters with as many friends as possible, so please feel free to share this with some of your friends. Also, if you’re not already subscribed to receive an email every time I publish, please consider doing so. It’s free and will remain so.

* The family brunch I described above reminded me of this song and it’s been playing in my head ever since. ‘Crowded Table’ by The Highwomen. You might enjoy it, too.

*I’m a sucker for note cards and stationary and just because I write these letters online doesn’t mean I won’t find an excuse to go to the Homer Bookstore and buy pretty things to write on.

Peter Pauper Press, Inc. Copyright 2020 Illustration by Terri Foss

January 2026: A second letter

Dear Friends,

When I wrote my January letter earlier this month I didn’t expect I’d be writing another one so soon. I haven’t even responded to everyone who reached out and I’d hoped to do so before writing again. But I was encouraged by how many of you replied. My soul felt lifted by the conversations that were started. My hope for deeper connection going into the new year was buoyed, and so I’m here again because I could use that kind of boost again. Perhaps you could too?

I have to warn you though, it’s been a heavy week, and this letter may not feel like much of a boost. In fact if you’re feeling sensitive right now, you might want to wait on this one or give it a pass altogether.

I’ll start by telling you about a book I listened to a couple of months ago. The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter is a book about confronting and even embracing the things in life that cause discomfort. It covers physical exertion, cold exposure and hunger – all things that have to do with our material existence, but it also considers existential discomforts such as boredom and the reality of our own impermanence. In the book, he talks about the Buddhist monks of Bhutan and their practice of contemplating their own deaths at least three times a day.

Recently I’ve been given plenty of opportunities to contemplate death, and this week in particular brought it into sharp focus.

Just after the holidays, our sweet old dog, the one we adopted after finding her on the side of the road fourteen years ago, went into decline. We recognized what was happening, and we knew our days with her were running out. Our care for her went from typical elder care accommodations to more of a hospice care situation. We fed her fresh ground beef and gave her extra cuddles. We carried her up and down the stairs and cleaned up after her when she didn’t make it outside. On Monday, I told my supervisor at work that I might need to take some time as we were getting close to having to make the difficult decision to have her put down.

Then on Tuesday morning I woke to a text from one of my sisters telling me to call her right away. That’s never a good thing to wake up to. I feared that the call might be about my 87 year old mom who’d just had a rough bout of flu and I braced myself before dialing my sister back. The news she delivered was not about my mom but about our nephew Ellijah, just 27 years old and the son of my youngest sister, who had died in the night after a tragic accident involving a gun. The exact circumstances of his death weren’t known at the time, and frankly they didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was gone, and whatever amount of pain and shock that I felt upon hearing the news were a million degrees smaller than what Ellijah’s parents and siblings were experiencing.

Then a sense of helplessness set in. We cannot undo death and we cannot ease the pain of a parent whose lost a child. We can offer comfort, express our condolences, shower them with love as best we’re able, but the hard truth is that sometimes pain has to be endured, and we have to allow those that are hurting to endure it in whatever way they need to. I can carry pain over the loss of Ellijah’s life, but that will not diminish the pain that my sister is experiencing. Comfort in her time of exquisite pain is the best I can hope for.

I was not personally close to Ellijah, but I kept in touch with him on Facebook. Interestingly, I feel like I know more about him now with the tremendous outpouring of fond memories and photos that his friends and close family members are sharing online. By all accounts he was silly and thoughtful and was an exceptionally loving uncle, brother, nephew, friend, son and coworker. And while none of that is surprising given what I did know of him, it’s beautiful to see so much love for him expressed so openly.

Like many of us, I have a love/hate relationship with social media, but I will say that this week I’ve been thankful for Facebook. It’s helped me know my nephew better. It’s given me a place to go to mourn. It’s helped me feel connected to family that’s thousands of miles away. And it’s a helpful and effective way for me to get this letter out to you, wherever you might be.

And writing this letter and knowing so many beautiful people are reading it is helping me process my own grief, and I thank you for being there.

I know there are many ways to go through grief. Lots of people prefer to keep it to themselves, but (obviously) I’m not one of those folks. I don’t share my grief to bring you down, and I apologize if that’s the effect this letter is having. I share because life is full of beautiful things and it’s full of hard things, and only sharing what’s good doesn’t feel completely honest. I promise I’ll share the good times as well so that I will not become the Debbie Downer of letter writers.

How are you? We’re just a couple of weeks into 2026 but it seems like a lot has happened. In terms of world events and politics, etc. it’s been intense and I have the sense that it’s going to be that way for a while. I keep reminding myself of the overall message of Easter’s The Comfort Crisis, which is that change for the better often comes from leaning in to discomfort. How do I lean into the discomfort of this time of chaos that we’re in? How do I show up for my family and my friends and my community? More importantly, what is my role in getting us through to the other side, whatever that other side might look like?

I’m looking for ways in which I’ve chosen comfort over growth in my own life, and there are plenty. One of them is my tendency to keep my convictions to myself.

The subject I’ve probably read the most about over the past two years is deconstruction from religious systems. I laugh about it because I deconstructed from my religion long before that word ‘deconstruction’ was a thing. I’m more in the reconstruction phase of my spiritual life and while organized religion isn’t the pathway I’m choosing, I still resonate deeply with the teachings of Jesus.

I am baffled and dismayed at how so many people who claim to follow Jesus don’t actually apply his teachings to their political convictions. It’s not my job to change anyone’s mind, but I am trying to become a person who speaks her own truth and I’m reclaiming the stories that formed my sense of right and wrong. On this subject, I highly recommend reading or listening to Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang. It’s funny, because he’s a comedian, but it points out the ways that scripture has been used to justify policies and behaviors that are a far cry from the message Jesus brought into the world.

Are you feeling challenged to step out of any of your comfort zones? If you are, I’d be curious to hear about it.

I’ll tell you about a beautiful thing that happened in our town a couple of weeks ago, although it is also a story connected to death. I guess that’s just the nature of this letter, which is a reflection of this moment in time, and a reflection of life in general.

There is a fun-loving group of people in town that have taken it upon themselves over the years to bring the New Orleans spirit to Homer. They call themselves the Krewe of Grambrinus Social Aid and Pleasure Club and every February they march in the winter carnival parade with their instruments and costumes and spread their Mardi Gras joy. In recent weeks a number of the folks that were a part of this festive group have passed on, but they were honored with a Second Line procession down Pioneer Avenue on a frigid and sunny Saturday afternoon. Nearly 200 people showed up with instruments, white handkerchiefs for waving, and umbrellas for spinning. Tears and laughter and a big group of friends walking down the road making a bit of a spectacle of themselves reminded me of the Homer of many years ago. A lot has changed about this town over the thirty odd years that we’ve lived here, but it’s still Homer at its core, and I appreciate that.

Back to our sweet old dog, Gypsy. The same day we heard the news of our nephew Ellijah, it became clear that it was time to say goodbye to her. Some days are worse than others, and Tuesday hit us hard.

Sorrow comes in different degrees, and it’s hard to hold the loss of our dog on the same scale as the loss of a beloved nephew. Still though, our house feels pretty empty without her, and our hearts are heavy that our companion of fourteen years is no longer with us. There’s that saying that love is love, and it’s true. On the same note, grief is grief, and we’re holding it right now, on all it’s different levels. You might be, too. And if so, please know you’re not alone.

Thank you for reading this letter and for being on the receiving end of all I’ve had to say. I should tell you that even though it’s been a hard week for me, I am okay. In fact I am more than okay. My life is good and my hope is that yours is too.

Before I wrap up, I have a couple of things to ask of you. If you have a beloved pet, please give them an extra scratch or a special treat. Please thank them for the joy they bring into your life. If you’re prone to such shows of affection, please stick your face down into their fur and inhale deeply.

If you’re a praying person, please say a prayer for my nephew’s parents and siblings. If you’re a Quaker, please hold them in the light. If you are an atheist, please imagine a future for them in which the pain over the loss of their son and brother is less acute.

I believe that how we define ourselves matters very little compared to the love we offer. Please offer and accept all that you can.

I loved hearing from so many of you after my last letter and I hope you’ll continue to stay in touch. All the best to you until next time.

With love,

Teresa

And just a few more things:

*In my last letter I posted the Neil Douglas-Klatz Aramaic translation of the lord’s prayer and many of you found it meaningful. I’ll post a link to it again, in case you are interested: https://abwoon.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/APwlinks2020.pdf

*What am I talking about when I talk about prayer? Here’s something I wrote back in 2018 that still feels true to me today. https://loftyminded.com/2018/10/25/imperfect-prayers/

*Responding through the blog platform, even through “reply” will always leave a public comment. If you’d like to reach out to me personally, here is my email address tsundmark@protonmail.com

January 2026: A Letter

Dear Friends – friends in real life, family members, acquaintances, neighbors, old friends, friends I’ve yet to meet, and friends that I’ll likely never cross physical paths with,

I hope this letter finds you well as we’re heading into a brand new year. I don’t know about you, but I feel like the past few years have changed me. I suppose that would be true no matter the year, no matter the era, but I’m feeling the changes from recent years more acutely. As a result, I’m feeling the desire to reconnect with people and my community. So I’m starting the year by writing you a letter.

I don’t know if there are any rules to letter writing, but my aim is to begin a conversation.

A good conversationalist asks questions, shares news, tells stories, and tosses out ideas that invite a response. A good conversation isn’t formed like an essay, so writing a letter that’s meant to be a conversation should, in theory, be able to ramble a bit, and switch topics, and ask rhetorical questions. It shouldn’t require a topic or a reason for existing. Which is good, because I don’t have a plan here, I’m just writing to say hey.

I fear that a letter in the form of a blog post will not have the charm that a handwritten letter would have. There’s no paper to unfold. There’s no handwriting to decipher. There are no eraser marks or crossed out words.

I recently came across a decades old letter that was sent to me from a college friend a year after her divorce. We each got married to our spouses in 1990, and the four of us were close friends in Missoula. Over time, we all moved on and our correspondence became infrequent. Now, enough time has passed without contact that I would have to do some searching in order to find her. Maybe I’ll add that to the list of things I’d like to do this year.

Her letter contained a lot of catching up but it wasn’t just small talk. It was real talk, and it reminded me of the conversations we’d shared back when we were both in our early 20s. Her letter, which was everything you’d want a letter from an old friend to be, came to me at a time in my life when I was pretty overwhelmed with raising children and trying to make ends meet and in general trying to keep my act together, and I don’t remember if I ever wrote her back. I hope I did.

When I was done reading it, I tucked it back into its envelope with its stamp that cost a whole lot less than a stamp costs now, and placed it back in the box that I’ll probably not look at for at least another decade. That’s a hard experience to create in digital format.

Now we have AI and I’m still trying to figure out my relationship to this thing that is here whether I’m ready for it or not. Have you noticed all of the AI written essays that are floating around social media lately? They’re stories about people or historical events. Often they’re political in nature. These essays are all similar in length and have short and choppy sentences that seem to be written for maximum impact and an overblown emotional response. They’re full of descriptors and metaphors that sound clever but I find them manipulative, and annoying.

I’ve always felt like I have a good bullshit detector, and I’m hoping that this particular super power will help me out in this age of AI, but I fear that as the technology gets better my BS detector will be put to the test. It’s a good argument for handwritten letters and across the table conversations.

What’s new with you? What changed for you in 2025? What are you looking forward to in the new year?

Are you sleeping well? Do you have good food to eat? Are you staying warm this winter? Do you have enough money to pay your bills? How are you in your relationships with your parents, your children, your significant other, your friends? How is your health?

I know these are questions we don’t often ask each other. Maybe that’s because we’re afraid of prying, or maybe it’s because receiving honest answers to these kinds of questions would require a response.

Somehow it feels safe to ask these kinds of questions in a letter. The reader (you) have a choice about whether or not to respond. Sometimes the written word acts as a barrier, which can be a good thing in certain situations or for certain people. In that way, a letter is like an opening. You can choose to go through it, or choose to stay outside.

In the local public library where I work, there are a few people who come in first thing when we open each day and stay until we close. I resist the urge to ask them if they have a warm place to sleep, or if they’re hungry, or if there is anything they need. I stick to my professional library worker persona and greet them with kindness when they walk through the door each morning. Sometimes I’m afraid that if I asked them direct questions about their well-being the spell would be broken and they’d stop showing up. And I’m glad they’re coming through those library doors. I’m glad a place exists where they can exist without being hassled. I wouldn’t want to mess that up.

I guess I’m trying to figure out if asking them those questions would be the right thing or the wrong thing to do. This is really all about acknowledging the hardship we see in the world rather than pretending everyone is okay. I guess I want people to know that it’s okay to not be okay and their value does not hinge on having a warm place to sleep or money in their pocket.

Transitions have always been tricky for me, both in writing and in life, which is another reason why this letter writing thing just might work for me. In 2025, our daughter and daughter-in-law made the difficult decision to part ways. This was a big transition for me to wrap my head around, but as these things go, it wasn’t about me, it was just a change I needed to accept. The two of them have demonstrated that breakups can be done gracefully, even with love, and for that I’m grateful. I’m also thankful for the time they chose to be together, because our lives were enhanced by the relationships their pairing brought our way. I can talk about it now without so much sadness, but I had some grief to work through this past year.

There were plenty of things to be thankful for in 2025. One of my ambitions for the year was to achieve more balance in my life, and while that is always going to be a work in progress, I feel as though I made some good strides in that area. My measuring stick was how I felt at the end of the summer, and for the first time in several years I wasn’t totally exhausted at the beginning of September. I attribute the better balance to an overall lowering of expectations. The garden wasn’t perfect this year. We didn’t vend at as many farmer’s markets. We only went to one day of the big music festival instead of the full three days. Those and many other small tweaks made a difference and allowed for a more relaxed summer vibe, which in Alaska can be difficult to achieve.

The most relaxing weekend of the summer was a camping trip Dean and I took in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge. We had a campground to ourselves and the weather was perfect. Dean had his canoe and I had my banjo and a lake to swim in. We ate well. We slept well. We spent a lot of hours around a campfire. It was the perfect way to spend a few days.

Another fun highlight of 2025 was winning the Kachemak Heritage Land Trust raffle. We were vending at the farmer’s market when I got news that I’d bought the winning ticket. My winnings included incredible bounty from local food producers and businesses – birch syrup, honey, a whole goose, a Traeger Grill, lots of fun swag, ice cream, a fondue pot, and gift certificates for knife sharpening, baked goods, garden supplies, a fishing charter, and loads of veggies, which helped compensate for this year’s less than perfect garden. I felt lucky, to be sure, but also grateful to live in a town that’s comprised of so many generous people who are contributing to such inspiring work.

Speaking of inspiring work, 2025 was a good year for our small business, Twin Fish Gardens. It’s growing slowly, as planned, and I’m enjoying getting to know this entrepreneurial side of myself that was lying dormant for a lot of years. Over the summer, between work and camping, we managed to harvest and process enough fireweed to keep our customers in tea for another year. My goals are to make things more efficient, incorporate more writing into the whole project, and start working on our garage conversion shop.

I’d love to know what’s inspiring you. Any good podcasts or albums to recommend? What about books?

Here are a few of my current inspirations:

* Bonnie Prince Billy’s 2025 album, The Purple Bird.

* Radio Paradise. Online radio that’s listener supported and free of ads. A real person curates every set, so it never feels monotonous and it’s introduced me to a ton of fabulous artists over the years. (My daughter calls me a Radio Paradise evangelist.)

* The Telepathy Tapes podcast.

* I’m currently reading Liturgies for Resisting Empire: Seeking Community, Belonging, and Peace in a Dehumanizing World by Kat Armas. I’ve borrowed the copy from the Homer Public Library but am feeling the need to get a copy of my own.

* If you are interested in such things, I highly recommend contemplating the Lord’s Prayer as translated from the Aramaic by Neil Douglas-Klotz. I’ve been using lines from it as journal prompts for the past couple of months and it’s a deep well of inspiration and insight. It’s good teaching, no matter your belief system.

If you’ve gotten this far into this letter, then you really are a friend. Thank you for being out there and for listening. I tend to be self-conscious about my writing and I put pretty high expectations on myself to make it all sound smart and well put together. I’m learning though, that for my intentions, being real matters more than being polished.

So here’s to a year of being real.

Let’s stay in touch, please, and let’s try to take care of ourselves and each other.

With love,

Teresa

Nothing Great

I’ve felt my fair share of righteous anger lately, and plenty of dismay, but today I’m sad. Incredibly sad. Was it the video of Kristi Noem looking cute and wearing a $30,000+ Rolex standing in front of caged humans that caused me to feel this way? Was it the video of masked men in plain clothes detaining Tufts University Ph.D. student Rumeysa Ozturk, even though she’d done nothing wrong? Is it the fact that the things that make life a little better for the citizens of this country are being made out to be handouts and a waste of money? Is it that decisions that impact the lives of working people are being made by a billionaire who cares not one iota about our well-being? Is it that the earth itself is seen as just a resource to be used for building wealth, with no consideration for the living beings who will inhabit this planet far into the future?

I realize that my personal sadness could go two different ways. I could wallow in it, shake my head and wish for better days, or I can try to put it to use somehow and be a part of the solution to the problem of the cruelty that’s being perpetuated in the name of making our country great.

But here’s the simple truth. Nothing great comes from cruelty. Nothing great comes from destroying the ecosystems that life depends on. Nothing great comes from causing others to suffer. Nothing great comes from scapegoating. Nothing great comes from a platform that’s been built on lies. Nothing great comes from pretending that this country hasn’t inflicted great harm both within and beyond our borders. And nothing great will ever come from valuing money and power over all else.

If being great means being oppressive, if it means having no regard for peoples’ ability to have a good life, if it means forgetting what it means to be good, then I don’t want any part of it.

Nameless

There is a mass of land north of where I live that bulges toward the heavens. It’s been measured by humans and thus determined to be the highest reaching land mass on the continent. People pilgrimage to this great land mass. Sometimes they stay in its proximity for days just to catch a glimpse.

Something so grand, so awe-inspiring, so beyond anything else, becomes revered; not because it demands reverence, but because reverence for it is inevitable. And to see it, to be near it, to feel its presence inspires us to use it as a reference. There are other land masses that protrude from this continent and each of them are unique and beautiful, but only one is The Great One.

What is the purpose of a name? I’ve had friends who’ve changed their names because they were never comfortable with the ones that had been chosen for them. I changed my name as well after I got married, like my mother did, and her mother before her, and hers before her as far back as the genealogical history on both sides of my family goes. Does my married name make me who I am any more than my maiden name did before that?

In a society that demands identification, would I cease to exist if I didn’t have a name? Without a name, how would I be known? By my appearance, my attributes, my essence? Would I be known by the evidence of my existence?

What evidence is there of my existence? There is my physical flesh and blood, although that will cease to exist one day. What about the children who were born from my body and the children they may have one day? Had I not chosen to have children though, I would still exist.

Would the words I write or the things I make with my hands act to prove my existence? Would they, even without a name to attach to them?

A name then, is a convenience. A name is something we attach to something that exists. But a name is not proof of existence.

A name gives us something to call each other.

A name gives us a sound, a visual to attach to ourselves and our surroundings, and when a name is agreed upon, it gives us something in common. When I say I live in Alaska, you recognize that name. You may not think of Alaska the same way I think of Alaska, but we have a common reference point from which we can launch our conversation.

As for me and for you, if the name that’s been attached to us were to be stripped away, what would we be left with? It depends on who’s asking. I am someone different to my spouse, to my kids, to my coworkers. We are seen from a different perspective from everyone we encounter, but does that change who we are fundamentally?

A name then, is a simplification. Who we are in our true essence is much more complicated than what a name could possibly contain. We, at our core, are nuanced beings who can move through the world and adapt to the environments in which we find ourselves.

I have different roles at home than I have at work. Roles then, are not unlike names.

I am the lady behind the circulation desk at the library. I am a Cook. Spouse. Friend. Writer. Musician. Beach wanderer. Sun seeker. Reader. Vacuum operator. Gardener. Tea maker. Sister. Mother. Animal caretaker. Neighbor. Driver. Television watcher. Internet scroller. Philosopher. Mystic.

Strip away any of these. Strip away all of these. Who am I?

We know each other by our names. We know each other by our associations.

“I don’t know your name, but you sat in front of me at the basketball game.”

“I’ve never met _____, but I’ve read an article they’ve written.”

“______ is a talented artist, and from what they’ve made I imagine they’d be interesting to talk to.”

“I’ve heard that name before, but I can’t recall where I’d know them from.”

We only know a person from the perspective from which we’ve interacted or been introduced. We can never know another person as well as we can know ourselves. And a name is never able to encompass the full story of whatever it is we are attempting to name.

If I use the word God, what does it mean? It will mean something different to you than it does to me because we only have our own perspective from which to give it meaning. We may have a guide that informs our ideas in the form of a text. We may have had experiences that add to our perspective of whatever it is we think about when we hear the word God.

A belief in God is not required in order to try to describe what is meant by the word God. What comes to mind when you hear the word God? What feeling is evoked? How would you describe whatever you think others might mean when they use the term God?

We each have an understanding of what we’re trying to describe, but my description will always be different than your description. No one perspective is complete.

What is it that we’re trying to name when we use the word God? The force that pulls us all together? All there is and all there ever will be? The endless cycle of being? That which gives us life?

We use the word God because an adequate description of what we’re trying to name will always fall short. The term God then is inadequate. It is a limitation, an approximation, a shortcut.

Could any name, could any book, could any religion or tradition claim to know all there is to know about God? No. It is an impossibility. All we can do is try to understand what is meant when we use the term God, and there is no end to such an exploration.

Could any name adequately encompass the grandness of the tallest mountain in North America? No, but the people who lived in its shadow, who lived with it as their continual reference point, described it as Denali – The Great One – so I will refer to it as that. No matter what any human calls it or names it though, the truth of the mountain’s existence, the truth of the mountain’s essence, the truth of the mountain’s grandeur is incapable of being diminished.

Remember, this is also true of you.