When I was a kid in St. Mike’s grammar school Joseph Stalin was the leader of the Soviet Union. This was the 1950’s. Mr. Stalin, we were told, was an evil man. His evil was the reason we practiced hiding under our desks to protect ourselves in the altogether possible event that he would rain
My take on death is delightfully captured in one of my favorite cartoons. The grim reaper is escorting a buddhist monk from a meditation hall. On his way out the door, the monk turns to a fellow monk who remains behind on his meditation cushion and says, “I’ll be right back.” I have no big
This photo, taken in 2015, is symbolic of my life, not uniquely I’m sure. Intense challenges, deep support. I’m reading the book “Betrayal,” by the Boston Globe investigative team that revealed the harrowing story of pedophile priests within the Catholic Church, the Church’s decades-long coverup of that abuse, and the lives brutalized by it. Napping
While we may never become a world renown anything, always available to us is something far more valuable: the peace of deep, abiding self-confidence. Not the ego’s rah-rah (born of fear). Rather, the confidence that resides in the core of our being, unfazed by anyone’s opinion, especially our own. This reflection was stimulated by
Retirement is an amusing delusion that can be both dangerous and rewarding. After all, what can we really retire from? Certainly not anything that’s essential, anything we cannot live without. Like bringing all the love we can to here and now. Like managing fear. Like allowing our experience to teach us. Like aligning commitments
Juggling eggs while galloping on a Kentucky Derby winner is what a lot of this year has felt like for me. I don’t wish things were different, but it sure is surreal. There are times when the thought of a brief vacation is very appealing. So when the winter’s firewood arrived, instead of asking our
What happens to your lifelong pursuit of climbing the world’s tallest mountains after, mysteriously, your leg has been amputated and your eyes no longer see? There are certain people who are spiritually mature enough (even though they may not know it or believe it) that they are ready for a challenge that will help them shed
A hot candidate for the Metaphor Hall of Fame? The topic at the AA meeting was “One day at a time.” Perhaps the most familiar of the AA slogans. Very helpful when you’re first getting sober and your life’s a train wreck and not drinking seems the equivalent of mud wrestling King Kong. Over time