On this 40th anniversary of Earth Day, I’m writing to you from what I consider to be an extraordinary slice of paradise… the cheerful park right next to our apartment complex that used to be called “the ugliest park in Manhattan.” Less than one year ago, Luther Gulick Park was a grim, litter-filled eyesore.

When the volunteer coordinator called me, she said she had a woman who was “too mean to die” and that she trusted that I was the right person for her. With that introduction, I left with an open heart and open mind, intending not to judge, but send loving energy to her. She was the most miserable, unlikable, complaining, woman I have met!

Fortunately for me, New York City is a very easy place to learn to meditate. In the midst of all the hustle, there are meditation centers of all stripes. I pretty much tried them all, finally alighting on the non-sectarian vipassana meditation as the one most in sync with my disposition. All these years later, what do I get out of meditation?

In the 1940s, Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell — who was credited with founding the Scout Movement — wrote a letter found in his desk drawer after his death. Within it was his now-famous advice to Scouts around the globe: “Try and leave this world a little better than you found it.”

There should be a rule against writing about meditation retreats immediately after they’re over. In those first hours and days post-retreat, it’s as if I’m experiencing the world through a fresh set of eyes. The cosmos have aligned. Nothing could be a problem. It also smacks of a certain smugness.

Many years ago I worked in a drab office full of cubicles where there were no secrets. One morning my colleague poked her head over the divider to tell me that she was having a visitor later that day — her best friend from college who, she confided, had inoperable brain cancer.

When a person dies, there are many things that can be said, and there is at least one thing that should never be said. The night after Alex died I was sitting in the living room of my sister’s house outside of Boston, when the front door opened and in came a nice-looking, middle-aged woman. When she saw me, she shook her head, then headed for the kitchen, saying sadly over her shoulder, “I just don’t understand the will of God.”

I picked up a canvas with Banksy’s beat up Buddha and wondered what the kids would make of it. So I plunked down 25 pounds and bought it. The first thing I did when I got home was pound a nail into the empty wall…