As parents we wonder how best to raise our children. Understandably, we use the very same blueprint we've used for our own lives, encouraging our kids to pursue love, meaning, success, money, security, career, etc. And yet, the lives built by those blueprints are rarely if ever happy ones (certainly not permanently so), are far [...]

In a scene from the screwball comedy, Meatballs, a summer camp counselor played by Bill Murray gives a rousing speech about the futility not just of an upcoming competition with a neighboring rich kids' camp, but of life itself (no matter how hard one tries, shrieks Murray, no matter how much God might be on our [...]

A man appears on the scene - no, scratch that, there have been too many men in this role. A woman appears on the scene. She is a great mystery to her new neighbors, quiet, preternaturally serene, utterly uninterested in the affairs of the world. To the few who encounter her, it is clear that [...]

The day after Labor Day when, for most of us, we return to work we dislike. Telling, isn't it, that a majority of heart attacks occur on Mondays, the day that our labors begin, and the fewest occur on Saturdays, the commencement of a two-day respite from that same work? It's similarly illuminating the way [...]

Today's post is spurred by something written by Thich Nhat Hanh on the subject of love. His statement, printed below, brought to mind experiences from a New Mexico vision quest almost exactly 11 years ago, and their role in opening this guarded, frightened heart. "When our hearts are small," wrote Hanh, "our understanding and compassion [...]

If my own life experience is any kind of indication, we live in a constant state of mental comparison to others. As in, how do I measure up in the estimation of my parents or children, or perhaps by the standards of my culture or race or socioeconomic grouping? Who am I, relative to them? [...]

What I call the God Experiment is an eye-opening adventure you won't soon forget. For 24 hours, transform everything around you into God. Replace every label and concept you have for people, places, and things with God. You do not need to be a believer to play this game - in fact, it will be [...]

Over the previous month life leveled me. Again. And then again. The reasons why are unimportant - far too often I've gotten lost in the symptoms behind the suffering and missed the message, the GIFT, underlying the suffering. In this case, humility. Life humbles. And despite the immense pain so often associated with the humbling [...]

A friend recently introduced me to David Steindl-Rast, a Benedictine Monk who survived Hitler's Germany, emigrated to the U.S. in the 1950s and, today, when he isn't living as a hermit, still gives inspiring talks at nearly 92 years of age. I particularly love this quote, which gets to the core of the problem with [...]

In my garage sit several boxes filled with the after effects of my father's life, including hundreds of photos of unfamiliar faces stretching back to equally unfamiliar places and times. The thing is, nobody is left to interpret those for me anyway, meaning that those 'family' photos are about as meaningful as photos I'd find [...]