Now More Than Ever . . .

When I first published Mud and Dreams, the levels of anxiety and depression, hostility and loneliness, were rising dramatically among all groups. That was before the pandemic, before so many other things that have driven us further apart. Conditions are even more desperate today. Now more than ever, we need…

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7 Things To Do During The Pandemic

In this time of uncertainty, when so much that we understood and believed about the world, and the way we organized our lives, has been turned upside down, there are a few things we can remember and do to maintain our center and make the best choices for our health and…

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10 Questions To Ask In A Different Way

The New Year is often a time for assessing things: For looking back over the past twelve months or twelve years, at our successes and shortcomings, our rejoices and regrets, and for looking ahead at what we hope for the future. The hard thing with any self-assessment, is not the…

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Mud and Dreams (Now Available!)

I am excited to announce that my first full book is now available.  (You can find it here.) Mud and Dreams is a series of essays on the poetry and science of living. A work of “motivational poetics” the book speaks directly to the human concerns at the center of…

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Changing the Narrative (Part 1)

The stories we tell ourselves matter. They make a difference in how we think about who we are and the way we structure our lives. They affect the paths we blaze and those we follow. Our stories inform every sigh and every tear, keep us afloat, and connect us to…

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Humanity and Saving a Nation

The poet Czeslaw Milosz once asked, ‘What is poetry which does not save/Nations or people?”   In the 1989 work Zinky Boys, Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich, shows us what is at stake. Alexievich, a Belarusian literary journalist, won the 2015 Nobel for her collections of haunting interviews. In Voices from…

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Back to the Cave Again

In the Republic, Plato gives us his “allegory of the cave”. Prisoners who are chained to their spots underground see only images flickering on the wall. They have no other reality. They are shown shadows of puppets without dimensions, without substance. Our poor little creatures know nothing else of life.…

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Astonishment

Abraham Joshua Heschel said that our goal should be to live lives in radical amazement. ….to get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. What everyday things still give you a feeling of beautiful astonishment?

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Fingertips

“Each one of us has at our fingertips, access to so much meaning and hope, goodness and beauty, in every moment, if we would only let ourselves see.” From Being Human by John Sean Doyle

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