I’ve been thinking a lot about freedom because of the July 4th holiday. I’ve been wondering, what does it mean to be free in today’s world when many people are not allowed to live their lives? When they are shot for running down a street? When they are killed in their beds? I’m referencing publicized [...]
spirituality
I have a tendency to idealize people, especially leaders. Not government officials because their peccadilloes are well documented, but other leaders like Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. However, everyone has their flaws. Gandhi was a racist and had some weird, perhaps even abusive, sexual behaviors. Dr. King cheated on his wife. Did both [...]
I have only told this story to a handful of people but now seems like the right time to share it more broadly. A few weeks ago I wrote a post about being the kind of people we want others to be. I mentioned the peace prayer, which is often mistakenly called the St. Francis [...]
It’s a three-day weekend here in the U.S. and it has me contemplating another three-day weekend from 2013. It was Labor Day and I had just moved into a new place, a cottage. I was excited at the prospect of not sharing any walls or ceilings with a neighbor and looked forward to much-needed [...]
Maybe a month ago, I noticed one of my succulents had a wilted leaf. I tugged it off and instead of merely removing the leaf, I managed to tear the stem of the plant nearly in two. As you can see in the picture below, this succulent started leaning like the Tower of Pisa. I [...]
As people all over the world celebrate, or recently celebrated Passover and Easter, I think about how both of those stories have never felt more relevant. To jog your memory, Passover is the story of Moses, the burning bush, and the 10 commandments. What I want to focus on in this post is the [...]
You know the expression “the world is your oyster”? If you think about it, the phrase doesn’t really match the connotation we have with it. We say “the world is your oyster” when we want to indicate the world is wide open, that you have numerous opportunities available to you, that sort of thing. [...]
The other day I went for a walk in the woods by my house. While on the trail, an animal turned around and stared at me for several seconds. It reminded me of a dog, but I didn’t spot an owner and also the face was too triangular. Was this some sort of cat? [...]
If I had to characterize the mood of last week, I would say “panicked.” In my circles at least, people are freaking out about the upcoming presidential election. It has a life or death tenor to it. On top of that, the coronavirus is sweeping the world and people are freaking out because there’s [...]
Something funny happened to me. This morning I read in Tosha’s Silver’s book It’s Not Your Money that sometimes when we’re angry we need to break something. She recommends plates but it could be anything – stuffed animals, coconuts, phone books. I felt the urge to break something but then talked myself out of [...]
