We were told to wear dark clothing for the evening—black, preferably. I didn’t have much with me that was fully black, so I pulled on what navy pieces I could find. It felt like preparing for a vigil or a rite of passage. My friend, the one who insisted we make the journey to Teotihuacan, was resolute. It wasn’t the kind of insistence that comes from ego or thrill-seeking. It was the kind of quiet, laser-sharp insistence you hear when someone tells you a good secret—one meant to lift, not to burden.

Teotihuacan, some say, is the birthplace of the gods. You can feel that when you’re there. By daylight, the place hums with the echo of civilizations who understood how to build both upward and inward. From the base of the Pyramid of the Sun to the steps leading to Quetzalcoatl, you begin to understand the sacred symmetry of intention and devotion. And that night, walking toward Gate Four under a waning gibbous moon, I knew we were approaching something holy—not a reenactment, but an unveiling.

We ducked under a chain-link fence and made our way toward a door. The lock resisted us, but not for long. Some thresholds are meant to test your willingness.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to live a contemplative life—not one of quiet detachment, but of awake presence. A life in which noticing becomes a form of reverence. Writing, for me, has become a discipline of paying attention: to people, to memory, to what the moon does in the sky. It is how I metabolize the sacred.

This is why I began the Praise Song for the Day column a few years ago. A practice in writing, yes, but more than that—a practice in seeing. Inspired by my friend, the poet and Mellon Foundation President Elizabeth Alexander, and her unforgettable 2009 inauguration poem by the same name, Praise Song was my attempt to elevate the everyday: a place, a song, a memory, a kindness, a loss, a person.

Elizabeth is someone I think of often when I consider the kind of life I want to lead. Like Thoreau, she is a surveyor. She maps the soul’s terrain. Whether through her poetry, her luminous memoir The Light of the World, or her leadership at Mellon, she moves through the world with deliberate grace. In mourning her late husband, artist Ficre Ghebreyesus, she wrote:

“Art replaces the light that is lost when the day fades… Great artists know that shadow, work always against the dying light, but always knowing that the day brings new light…”

That’s the kind of work I long to do: to write in such a way that restores light—not in a flashy or performative sense, but in the way a candle does, quietly, offering warmth.

That night in Teotihuacan, under the moon’s patient glow, I remembered what I often forget: that every journey is unique, and nobody else walks it quite like you. I didn’t need to rehash every step we took or every word exchanged. Some stories aren’t for repetition—they’re for inhabiting.

What matters is what lingers: the knowing that something special happened, the feeling of feet filing quietly through sacred dust, the way the moon cast the pyramid in relief like a memory you hadn’t remembered until just now.

What matters is the way we walk through this life—deliberately, with care, with praise.

ANEW. A life of praise is not about being naive. It’s about seeing clearly. It’s about honoring the hidden things—the shadow and the light. It’s about keeping a door ajar in your heart so the sacred can slip in when you're least expecting it.

Elizabeth Alexander does that with her words. Teotihuacan did that with its silence.

And I am trying—each day, each post, each breath—to do that too.

May it always be so.

Curated Listening:

Born Stevland Hardaway Judkins, Stevie Wonder has spent over seven decades unfolding a mystery made of sound, soul, and spirit. Blind since infancy, he’s always seen more than most—through music that heals, provokes, and lifts. “If It’s Magic” is one of his quietest revelations. A harp, a voice, a truth: that love, when real, is both fragile and eternal. Let it play. Let it hold you. Let it remind you. Listen to it HERE.

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