“I would steal the stress and abuse from your life in an instant if I could, but I cannot. However, has the chaos you are facing taught you something about the human journey that you can use to help others?” I have asked some version of this question to hundreds of people over the past …
Can It Be Okay?
The woman on the other end of the call tried desperately to speak through anxiety and a torrent of tears. “Take a deep breath.” I said, “I want to understand what you are facing.” “I’m overwhelmed. I’m confused. My life is falling apart. I tried to call my therapist, but her mailbox is full, so …
Nudging The World
“I’m done. I can’t take it any longer.” she said. “I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety since I was a child and I simply cannot do it any longer.” I struggled to find words to help, and I told her so. In the midst of our conversation, she told me her psychologist believed every person …
Winning the Lottery
I am fascinated how often people battered by life, acknowledge that, despite the harshness of the journey, it bore gifts they hope never to relinquish. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer a few years ago, but it’s severity, and need to deal with it, only became clear in early 2019. In the months since the …
Do You Believe in Fairness?
At first, it ended tragically. At a recent Operation Snowball* retreat, the teens wrote a skit entitled “Asking for Help.” In the first performance, one of the teens was struggling mightily with challenges life mercilessly hurled in her path. Despite her overwhelming heartbreak and pain, she never asked for help. Those around her, even if …
The Tears of God
Resource Curse. It’s the plague wrought upon the planet when a person, company, institution or government finds themselves awash in inconceivable wealth. In Blowout, Rachel Maddow’s comprehensive, forthright, and beautifully written examination of the oil and gas industries, we learn of the curse rained down upon our species as a result of billions of dollars …
Listening for the Breath of God
I often feel guilty for not being more present in the exploding world of blogs, podcasts, and videos. I spend too little time, it feels, listening to others, and precious little time creating personal content. A voice, demanding I change my errant ways, screams from all directions. “You need to write every day.” “Only those …
When Opening Doors & Windows Is Not Enough
Note: The following will be published in the November/December issue of Neighbors of Batavia magazine. The morning of September 12, the world of Neighbors magazines was torn apart. Kate Sullivan, who, with her husband Tim, published Neighbors of Batavia magazine, was ripped from our lives. The vision they shared—helping communities discover their heart and soul—has …
Opening Doors & Windows – Part 1
Fair warning. For those who look to these posts for comfort and reconciliation, this piece is likely an exception. Several recent books and conversations emboldened me to peer some distance into the future. The vista is, at best, sobering. Bill McKibben, an environmentalist who has been writing about global warming for more than 30 years, …
Celebrating Moments of Success
“You are truly a gentleman,” I told him. Later, I began to wonder if it had been a mistake. It was early morning on the final day of a recent trip to Ireland. I had just finished a session on the treadmill in the hotel’s fitness center and was returning to our room. To my …
A Moment of Grace
When grace enters my life unexpectedly, the moment often becomes a font of knowledge and wisdom. Operation Snowball is an organization for high school students who want to live healthy lives by keeping an informed and respectable distance between themselves and drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. Twice each year a three-day retreat is convened for a …
Becoming Irrelevant
If who I become in the world is determined by the decisions I make, the more I improve their accuracy and efficacy, the better I am as a person, physically and emotionally. The brain is a marvelous, complex organ, and, while we wish it would make every decision with perfection, it often lets us down. …