A Christmas poem A wordspokenlays down its lifeby taking onflesh of black texton white pageto await the attentivereaderin whose mindthe letter, springingto new life,may become spirit. The Word became fleshand laid down his lifein birthgiving lifein giving life upredefining love. May that love lead you to the beauty on the far side of pain. Merry …
Tag archives: Words
Giving birth to words
Writing often strikes me as rather like having kids. (Not that I’ve ever had kids, but being a doctor does give you a vague idea.) It starts with you conceiving these seeds of ephemeral ideas that drop into your mind. You carry them around within you for days, sometimes for weeks and months. When the …
Communication breakdown
A poem No one is an island, they say but they lie, for what else are we? Bounded by our hard egos and separated by a vast sea of sheer individuality. Yet, we are not isolated for from island to island leaky boats incessantly float on currents of speech piloted by unskilled thought… And long …
Death by criticism
A meditation on sticks, stones and words Harsh criticism and real communication have this in common: Both are about nakedness. And yet, they are fundamentally different. Communication is you in charge. You in the presence of someone else (or even a group), but taking off your clothes yourself, perhaps because they ask, but most importantly, because you …
Paper or ebooks? Why the debate really doesn’t matter.
(And the one thing that does matter.) I’m a big fan of electronic reading and I don’t get those who insist that paper is better. Okay, I actually kind of get them, but still. It’s hard for me not to think of my friends who insist on paper as probably the same kind of people who …
Continue reading “Paper or ebooks? Why the debate really doesn’t matter.”
Talking ≠ Communication
And 3 things you might be taking for granted about getting through to others In my last post, “There’s a gap between doctors and patients (where words apparently go to die),” I talked about how we as doctors consistently miss the point of what patients are trying to say. (It happens vice versa too, of course, …