It takes so much energy to feel the pain and suffering of our children, much more so than our own.

John and Kelly Travolta know this to the fullest extent possible - when a child dies. I see how hard it is with the minor struggles our children face...

New Years Day is just another of the multitude of new beginnings in life.

As 2009 begins, I am reminded of how many new beginnings we experience throughout our lives. Perhaps we all know that saying that every moment is a new beginning ('today is the first day of the...

There is a tendency among some Christians to hold the dogma of their religion so tightly that its relevance is lost to non-believers.

Alan Watts, the Buddhist scholar, wrote of the shared symbolism of a union between opposites in many religions including Christianity. It is relevant to the agnostic...

A few years back I discovered that meditation or contemplative practices done in a group setting are quite different than practices done alone. At the time, I was reading Steven Strogatz book 'Sync' about the science of synchronicity (the phenomenon of naturally arising sync in nature) and saw that the...

I love Thanksgiving, and family meals in general, but I've discovered that the pre-meal moment reserved in many homes for prayer is an awkward time for me. Raised by Christian parents, prayer was a habit prior to every meal - rote in nature. Since I left religion many years ago,...

The other night I dreamed about a woman with whom I had a 'falling out' several years ago. In the dream, she and I were friends - laughing and sharing some day-to-day tidbits of life. Jung thought dreams were a key to personal self-discovery. As he saw it they could...

A few years ago I wrote my first post on HuffPo about what it means to be a mystic mom. I described the transcendent experience of motherhood where we connect with someone else to such a degree that we transcend our self-oriented worldview and experience a 'oneness' with another....

I heard the other night a young girl describe an interview she conducted with the then Senator Barack Obama. She was able to ask him lots of questions that her friend's wanted to know, like 'Do you like ice cream or pie? Deep-dish pizza or thin crust?'

One of...

In the last week of the election, anxiety in our country is palpable. But I also am starting to realize that it is how we think, feel, and act after the election that is really important. Whoever wins, someone loses and that group of people will feel sorrow and disappointment...

"To cover all the earth with sheets of hide
Where could such amounts of skin be found?
But simply wrap some leather round your feet
And it's as if the whole earth has been covered"

The simple message in this poem written in the early part...

I've been thinking a lot about 'what makes a marriage work' because I officiated a wedding this summer, my own 34th wedding anniversary is next month, and I see the struggles faced by some friends and colleagues in their marriages.

Scientists have identified several variables that can predict success...

The other day I drove my daughter to college in northern California. At one point in the drive, I made a wrong turn and found myself having to drive an extra few miles to the next freeway exit and then turn around to trace back my route and get on...

Paul Reiser's blog points out the differences between the candidates -- one treats us like children, the other doesn't. Using this analogy, one must conclude that half of Americans like parental figures in power, half do not. Why?

Perhaps the half wanting control from the top-down find security...

I've noticed since the conventions that we have slipped completely into emotional politics. There is anger, anxiety, pride, cynicism, shock, fear, and panic attached to our blogs, our words, the candidate's ads, the candidate's rhetoric, and seemingly everyone in America right now. At least with apathy, the mood was steady...

Life is short. Our individual life spans make up a minuscule proportion of time since the origin of modern humans. It is easy to forget how short our individual lives are in the midst of the daily decisions we face; but it is worth reminding ourselves as we go to...

Franz Kafka revealed the weirdness of thought, the profoundness of thought, and the commonality of thought in his writings. The writings he left upon death to his friend Max Brod with orders to be destroyed have surfaced in a new book, "The Tremendous World I have Inside my Head" (by...

I am on holiday with my family in Martha's Vineyard staying on a peaceful farm on a beautiful pond near the ocean. The pond is still yet full of life and our kids are learning the art of crabbing. In the morning as the sun rises, geese raise their...

To meditate means to examine. It doesn't mean you have to sit in a lotus position in silence (although you can). It means you are attending to what's going on within you - perhaps with your breath and senses, your internal thoughts and feelings, or the space in between these...

I read an article recently that drew an analogy of the term 'meditation' to 'sports', a word that describes a large class or family of varying forms of activity such as track, baseball basketball, etc. The general family of meditation was defined as 'complex emotional and attentional regulatory strategies developed...

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." -- Maya Angelou

I like that quote because it reminds me that it is how I go about my day that is...