Month: September 2014


stay…good dog.


  Sometimes when I travel, emerging from my car with Kai, my black lab in tow, I am asked by those who stop to pet him (they always stop to pet him) if he is a service dog.  I suppose it is because Kai has a sort of Zen quality...

I have a question.


When you said "Do this in remembrance of me." what did you mean? To whom did you speak? Was it to me? Was it to us? Or were you speaking to holy people? Because I am just a person trying to be kind; trying to make sense of the grief...

annoyances and pickles and Korea and Jesus


Good pickles are hard to find.  Too often they are soft or too spongy or bland or too vinegary or too sour. Finally, a jewish friend of mine in the Bronx has given me a recipe which gets me the crisp, half-sour, spicy pickles I like with my bologna sandwich....

practicing stillness


My dog Kai is so often my teacher.  He seems so quiet and unobtrusive, and yet he sits on the carpet and looks back at me from time to time asking, with his eyes, if I am ok.  Or perhaps I am just projecting that question onto him. The thing...

Longings


Green, that pale green of spring, is the color to which I attribute God's longing for us and for the fruit of our lives. Artists tend to see colors and shapes with the attention with which a starving man sees a hamburger. Walking in the Denver Botanical Gardens, I came...

the defense rests


One consistent translation of the word "satan" comes from the Hebrew, the second language of scriptural texts as they were being formed into a collection.  When "Satan" is mentioned, the Hebrew is often "prosecutor," a legal term for the one who makes a case against a person, lobbying the court...

lilies and dragonflies


Humans want to connect to each other.  As clergy, we want them to want to connect with God,  and they often do.  That is to say, they often both want to connect to God and indeed, often connect to God in churches.  But what I notice most in people is...

balance and wellness on the river of life


Fearless love and compassion for one's self can do wonders for self-care.  I look at my self in a mirror and I see a man who has been through a lot.  LIke all of us who have been through a lot.  We are an exhausted, wealthy society.  And it shows. ...

underneath the underneath and throughout


This piece of quartz crystal played host to gold as the minerals colluded to grow into this chunk of rock formation.  Take off the gold, and you will find a gorgeous crystal of white and clear stone.  Leave it on, and it shimmers with gold's untarnished splendor. We so often...

ancestors and becoming


We are not, most of us, blessed by the good fortune of having been born into families with parents who are or were spiritually awakened beings.  Some are so born, and they are greatly blessed, spiritually in the way that children born into a wealth family are blessed materially and...