The skeletal branches of towering trees groaned in the wind as I crunched through the snowy quad in the semi-darkness of the deserted campus. I pushed on the doors to the comparative religions building, surprised when they gave way, and slipped on my mask. My imaginary inner professor had taken up invisible residence in a […]
Homeless, the ego seeks
“You’ll need to remove everything that might offend someone,” the realtor said. “You mean lose the Obama,” I said. Referring to the life-sized, standup cardboard cutout of our former POTUS procured during the 2008 election. Headed in 2016 for the dumpster, truth be told, but saved by the unexpected outcome of that election. Consequently retained […]
Happiness runs in a circular motion
(Hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from my second book, Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want, available on Amazon :)) “Welcome home, Jim Dugan,” said the Irishman at the Customs desk in Dublin, appropriately ruddy-cheeked and blarney-tongued, stamping my father’s passport and causing Dad to pinken to his very toes with glee, stepping foot at last onto […]
Faith, Hope and Clarity
(The world may seem pretty hopeless but the power of our decision-making mind to choose a perspective of sanity and compassionate inclusion beckons surely in every moment nonetheless! Here’s an excerpt from my book Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want on this very topic. :)) Hope may be “the thing with feathers” but—no offense Emily Dickinson—things […]
Truth has rushed to meet you (in stealth mode; but still!)
I sat in my car outside the university fitness center I belong to after completing another lonely ride to nowhere on a stationary bike. Mindlessly perusing magazines like People and US reporting on matters of dire importance such as reader polls revealing which celebrity wore which designer outfit best. Even as my iphone continued to […]
What you teach is teaching you
The unbearable heaviness of being
(Here’s another excerpt from my second A Course in Miracles essay collection, Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want.) The Friday before my daughter’s Spring Break we gathered to remember a 20-year-old college student who had been heading to California on holiday when her personal story abruptly and inexplicably ended. Rain turned to snow–and back again–as we […]
The real upside of hip fractures
(I wrote this essay about learning to practice A Course in Miracles, excerpted from my first book, Extraordinary Ordinary Forgiveness, eight years ago. It helps remind me that our journey home is a process both of deepening understanding and allowing our unconscious resistance to Love, our belief in the very self we think protects us, […]
I will not hurt myself again today
“I will not hurt myself again today,” I muttered, hopping back from the path of another SUV zipping by way too fast (even under fair-weather conditions) for a residential area, lobbing another ill-formed missile of snow and ice in my direction. I dropped the shovel, stripped off my ski gloves, and blew on my fingers, […]
What is sin?
(Happy New Year! Here’s another excerpt from my most recent collection of essays, Forgiveness: The Key to Happiness, about learning to live a forgiving and forgiven life and truly smile.) What is sin? I lifted my head from the cradle of my folded arms resting on his desk, flexed my fingers stinging with pins and […]