Relaxation, Mindfulness, and a Visit with the Past Now the name Herbert Benson might not ring a bell with you, but that bell clanged for me. Dr. Benson died last month at the age of 86. He was a well-known and respected cardiologist at Harvard and a pioneer in the early days of the mind-body…

“My Country, ‘Tis of Thee;” or, It Can’t Happen Here. (Can it?) Years ago – I think it was in the 1930s, during the rise of Nazism and fascism generally – Sinclair Lewis wrote a book titled It Can’t Happen Here (see lead photo). And although it was before my time, I believe he concluded…

Archbishop Desmond Tutu: A Good Man, a Saint in His Own Time and Ours I met Archbishop Tutu when I visited South Africa in 2016. He was a Patron of Volmoed – a wonderful conference and retreat center – from 1990 to 2021. I was staying at Volmoed while visiting my friends John and Isobel…

We Can Be Amazingly Good! Seriously! And When You See Goodness in Front of You, It’s Awesome! Maybe like so many of you, we hit the road for Thanksgiving. Or rather we hit the skyways, taking a flight across country through Dallas to Ontario, California, to spend Thanksgiving with my youngest son Kevin and his…

I Think I Need a Break! Retreat, Anyone? I have some friends – John and Isobel de Gruchy – who live near Cape Town in South Africa. John is Professor Emeritus of Christian Studies at the University of Cape Town, and his wife, Isobel, is a talented writer and artist. (In fact, one of her…

Don’t Worry! Be Happy! Or Live for Today. Or … Do you remember that Grass Roots’ song, “Let’s Live For Today?” I don’t remember exactly when it came out (sounds so ’60s-ish), but I do remember hearing it some years ago – and now played on my Pandora station frequently. I also remember disapproving of…

Together We Stand; Divided We … Are Much Less Than We Could Be as Humans Some of you may know that for a good chunk of my adolescent and adult years I was a Roman Catholic. I was a convert to that communion during my senior year in high school – much to my parents’…

Enthralled and Falling in Love; Disenthralled: What’s That?¹ I imagine that most of us, at one time or another – be it a first puppy love, maybe a crush on that teenage heartthrob, possibly your spouse and longtime lover – most of us have been enthralled with someone. Fascinated, maybe writing their name over and…

Our Town: Everyone’s Life, the Glory of Now I expect that almost everyone reading this blog has, at one time or another, actually seen Thornton Wilder’s play, Our Town. It’s been revived a number of times on Broadway, staged locally in high school gymnasiums across the country, and presented in local venues around the world.…

Art from Kate Murphy’s op-ed in The New York Times Life’s Priorities: How the Pandemic and Life Itself Changes Them When I was a graduate student in psychology at Indiana University-Bloomington, there was a sociologist on the faculty named Frank Westie. He carried out a questionnaire study, and to this day I might be able…