The 4 a.m. anxiety wake-up call. Shit, not again. The mental engine sparks to life and like that the mind is a whirl of anxious thoughts and fears about this person or that, regrets about the past, apprehension about the future, money, kids, health. It's as if they've been waiting there in the darker corners [...]

Speaking with a neighbor the other day, I envied news of his beach home in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Until, that is, he confessed with a sigh, “Most summers we find it difficult to go.” The reason? His children’s ridiculously complicated schedules. Turns out his daughters, neither yet 10 years of age, were heavily booked [...]

A lot of people go for a walk or run to decompress, to blow off steam, to regroup. I’ve been doing that of late as well, but with a twist: Instead of spending the time looking at that which stresses me, I’m redirecting the gaze at that which is experiencing the stress. After all, if [...]

Several years ago, at the absolute depths of my personal crisis, a horrendous and hideous thought suddenly occurred to me: What if there is no God? What if this entire existence is … meaningless? What if all of the suffering and anguish and turmoil – not just within me, but in the world itself – [...]

Today is my 47th birthday and to celebrate I want to share with you three gifts that have made a big difference in my life and perhaps will in yours as well. The first is my personal "Bible" if you will, a book by the late Robert Adams entitled "Silence of the Heart." It is [...]

In a classic scene from “Young Frankenstein,” Igor is dispatched to snatch from a laboratory the brain of a recently deceased genius as the final ingredient in Dr. Frankenstein’s reanimation project. Brought to life, however, the monster behaves in a deranged fashion, prompting Frankenstein to ask Igor to repeat the name on the jar from [...]

My first childhood hero was an agent on the popular television program, "The FBI." Despite getting shot every week or two, he never complained and always managed to get the bad guy. Alas, a tour of FBI headquarters did to my hero-agent what all those bullets couldn't: killed him off when I learned he was nothing [...]

We watched “2012” the other night, the latest in what seems to be a growing industry of apocalyptic films and books foretelling the end of civilization as we know it. Coming as it does on the heels of so many recent high-profile earthquakes, it’s got more than a few folks feeling jittery. Watching the film [...]

John Edwards. Tiger Woods. Jesse James. Lots of high-profile marital shenanigans of late. The most recent involves actress Sandra Bullock, who barely had time to celebrate her new best-acting Oscar before word came of hubby Jesse James’s months-long tryst with a “tattoo model.” Thousands have commented on the situation, virtually all of them in support of [...]

The flyer in my mailbox read: “Because life is too busy to waste time cleaning your own home.” And it pictured a happy team of immigrants busily cleaning a modern middle-class McMansion while the equally happy homeowners helpfully tutored their children with all that extra time on their hands. Alas, experience teaches us that the [...]