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Prescription for When the World Feels Too Crazy, Confusing and Overwhelming - a Generous Dose of Awe

“ Awe is the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world. ” — Dacher Keltner It got to me this morning—that quiet, accumulating weight of the world pressing in before I could quite name why. A headline here, a comment there, voices rising and tightening, each one a little sharper than the last. I could feel it first in my body, a low hum of agitation, like something inside me was bracing for a fight I didn’t want

Apr 108 min read

Not Towers, But Tables: Connecting with Love in a Divided World

“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer them with love.” — Mahatma Gandhi It happened at our simple and popular community dinner Thursday night. The Seventh Day Adventists served their signature vegetarian “haystacks.” Usually it’s an easy-going, if a little rowdy, environment. That’s how these things often begin—not in lecture halls or debates, but at long tables where people come carrying their fully human selves. John had sat down with a young woman and her

Mar 248 min read

Do You, Do They...Want Help, a Hug, or to Be Heard?

“The most effective communicators aren’t the people who talk the most. They are the people who are best at understanding what kind of conversation is happening.”— Charles Duhigg, from Supercommunicators One evening, Charles Duhigg came home from work frustrated. Duhigg, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who has written for The New York Times and authored several books about human behavior, had spent the day struggling with a difficult boss. When he walked through the door

Mar 125 min read

On Marriage...Fifty-Two Years of Being in the Dojo Together; One Thing I Learned that Rattled My Head - Made Me a Little More Humble, a Bit Wiser, Kinder, Tougher, and More Relationship Savvy

We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are. Anaïs Nin I wrote most of this blog in the past, but wanted to re-visit it because first, John and I have just celebrated an anniversary, fifty two years of marriage. It’s a big marker for us. We lived through several renditions of ourselves along side of each other. Second, because relationships, both struggles and successes are the basis of most all our human problems as well as the primary route to flourishing. Ver

Nov 21, 20259 min read