Banner photo: Girl holding a child Arkansas, ca 1855, at the National Museum of African American History and Culture I am grateful to white historian Charles B. Dew for The Making of a Racist, a stark and insightful guide to his personal acculturation to the Southern story of slavery and the civil war, and to […]
The small I don’t know “I don’t know” surely ranks as among the most difficult phrases for many of us to utter. Our families and culture indoctrinate us, implicitly or explicitly, in one or another story of the associated dangers. Test anxiety, performance anxiety, terror of public speaking are some of the common ways this […]
The consequences of some actions are clear. I drop a glass on the tile floor, and the glass shatters. I turn away from someone who is talking to me, and something in the relationship shatters – in a small or a big way. Over the span of a year, a decade, a lifetime – cause […]
First I have to notice. The month before Rosh Hashonah is devoted to reviewing one’s accounts, seeing what is in need of repair – how my ways of doing and being have uplifted or downtrodden, made whole or split, brought solace or suffering. So first comes noticing. Some years that is all I can do, […]
Dear Friends, Today I celebrate a full year of showing up with a weekly post about some aspect of living A Life of Practice. The medium has been the message: this blog has been a promise to myself to keep showing up, sharing my sometimes rough growing edges, my ongoing questions, and my occasional revelations. In […]
The power of a motive question I have been asked from time to time in my nondual healing studies – usually as I try to avoid one of my personal demons by pinning down some new piece of understanding, knowledge or skill: “What is it you are trying to solve?” The “answer” to this question is not a […]
Neglected corners Dust, dirt, time lurk in the corners of our lives. Since spring, I have purposefully and energetically dug into many neglected corners of the house we have lived in for 33 years. That is when we decided to undertake refinishing our wood floors and freshening the paint on our walls. During the months […]
Like all human beings, I want to know that I am special. I was schooled to earn this state of grace by being different: by standing out, cultivating individuality. Excelling. At all costs, avoiding the ordinary. At some point in my healing and awakening, it occurred to me that we are each an ongoing special […]
Justice must be hard-won over and over again. In these chaotic times, our centuries-old dueling narratives are shaped by identity politics and intersectional disputes. The heart of each narrative is how we identify with our social groups – and the biases, assumptions, and expectations that hide within the cultural stories we inhabit. There is both personal work […]
Life events, aka Reality, continuously weaves surprising plot twists and characters into my preferred story about my life. Pops or induces slow leaks in my inflated views of myself, nudging or hurtling me towards the Real. Deprives me of false hope and false comfort. So it goes with America’s stories as well. Whose precious and difficult […]
