Much like in the iconic movie Ground Hog Day, another Monday morning brought another start to yet another week of seeming captivity following another trying weekend of trying to sell our home to buy a smaller place and get on with our so-called lives. Having dropped the price yet again toward the end of last […]
The Quiet Center
I sat at my desk on yet another Monday morning of no apparent forward movement on selling our house. Struggling to embrace the holding pattern I found myself inexplicably locked into as a classroom in true forgiveness. Rather than yet another self-crafted prison of punishment for the forgotten crime of separation from our source, the […]
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 […]
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall
(Hope you’ll enjoy this excerpt from my book Forgiveness Offers Everything I Want, available on Amazon.) I did not grow up in a family or community that embraced poetry—I mean, how many American families or communities do? And yet I secretly wrote it as a child, and remain a closet poet to this day. My […]
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 […]
On a wing (or two) and a prayer
As the Southwest 737 climbed through the dull clouds and ragged hills of San Diego the Captain explained Air Traffic Control had advised him that the skies throughout our flight path in California today were “out of sorts,” much like the reluctant flyer I still think I am. Our ascent would prove bumpier than usual; […]
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 […]
See you in September
“Just put on the God-damn glasses,” I said. “I mean, who do you think you are, anyway? Icarus? A two-year old? The President of the United States?” My inner professor tossed back his head and laughed. “We’ve talked about this,” he said. But I was just trying to protect him, for God’s sake, and let’s […]
The (Eventually) Happy Learner
(Here’s another excerpt from my most recent collection of acim forgiveness essays, Forgiveness: the Key to Happiness—hope you enjoy!) The proverbial battlefield still smoldered above strewn, severed limbs as tangled as a Picasso painting, the sun a distant orb obscured by the bitter ash of betrayal. I lay writhing in pain in the middle of […]