The real story.

There is some popular rhetoric out there that negative feelings can be extinguished simply by overriding them with positive thinking and affirming thoughts. Don't feed the negative, and it will - poof!- vanish away and only love and light will remain! Wouldn't that be nice. The thing we come to realize sooner or later though, is …

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In sickness.

We are deep into week two of sickness. One bug followed by an even bigger, meaner bug and day five of the all-night brigade to alleviate breathing passages, soothe, and pray desperately for the much-needed mercy of sweet, deep healing sleep. This is only the second major bout with illness for my son but our first experience with the …

We can do hard things.

Today, Grant me the courage to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference. This prayer saves me over and over. It reminds me of the power of acceptance and the power of choice I always have within any circumstance. Sometimes it …

Radical non-action.

Today my practice is courage. Every day that I come to sit is a courageous act. The fear may come in form of excuses and of distractions, giving the illusion of urgency. My partner reminded me that there is almost always at least a 5-10 second space we can take before reacting to a situation. …

No battle.

“Most people go through the day, attending their responsibilities with the outward pressure of all the to-do’s but also the inward pressure of what they feel they must prove to themselves and to the world. Therefore their tasks deplete them doubly.” The words reverberated through the room and I felt my chest tighten instantly. I …

Get the hell out of my way.

"Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read the lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth …