Local author Sara Harlan’s new book has a catchy, yet misleading, title.

Her “Morsels of Zen,” rather than sharing small amounts of peace and calm, instead gives readers unlimited access to insights and reflections that help define the deeper meanings of life’s ebbs and flows.

More than mere food for thought, it’s a veritable feast of inspiration for how to live well through life’s trials and tribulations.

Harlan, a 1984 La Conner High alum who went on to graduate from Whitman College, the Walla Walla school known for its rigorous academics, presented excerpts from her thought-provoking tome during a one-hour Jan. 7 presentation at the La Conner Swinomish Library.

“This isn’t going to be a lecture or a workshop,” vowed Harlan, a veteran teacher and librarian who spent more than three decades on campuses around the globe. “I’d like it to be more of a conversation; a walk we take together.”

Her conversational approach, during which Harlan also introduced key passages from Morsels of Zen, invited the audience to increase mindfulness by focusing on often overlooked aspects of everyday life.

As an example, Harlan passed around pieces of weathered beach glass she recently gathered on a walk near her Guemes Island home. The discussion that followed compared the transition of the glass from a clear to opaque surface to the human aging process.

“In everyday life, there are many opportunities to pause and take it in and embrace mindfulness,” Harlan noted. “We can ask, how is this like me or like the world? It’s very empowering.”

Morsels of Zen, available through Seaport Books in La Conner, is a collection of essays Harlan wrote for a blog that began by linking selected days in history with modern times. But as she worked through the grief of losing to cancer her husband of 15 years, Harlan’s compositions became more mindful and reflective, many the products of her ever more contemplative strolls around the island.

“What I discovered on my walks is that everything is a teacher. We just have to pay attention,” she said.

Harlan said that consciously employing mindfulness creates a “broader context for our lives and the world around us.”

Harlan brought several in the library conference room to tears when reading from “Releasing Dave,” the poignant section of her book describing the bittersweet catharsis of spreading her late husband’s ashes at sentimental sites connected to the couple’s wedding ceremony and subsequent anniversary visits.

One member of the audience termed that particular passage as “raw and powerful.” Another said that those who have suffered losses can relate to Harlan’s perceptive and heartfelt prose.

Having taught art at various stages of her career (she provided the illustrations for Morsels of Zen), Harlan also revealed during the briskly paced program how she approaches the writing process.

“All my writing comes from observations,” she said. “I write down my ideas in rough form and then whittle away at them like a new jigsaw puzzle. When you dump it out, it’s a jumble. So, you have to start out by looking for those edge pieces.”

Every day on her walks, especially those along the Guemes shoreline, Harlan discovers new topics to explore and convey to readers.

“Like the water, there is life within me,” she said.

Bill Reynolds is a general assignment reporter for La Conner Community News.