Guidelines

The common cold of the soul just may be irritability. Or so a group of us determined during a recent meeting. To be like the common cold, it has to be readily “catchable” by others. And what is more catchable than another’s irritation? It is easier to catch than the horrific Covid virus. Irritation spoils […]

More on love and picking berries. A few more things I discovered while my wife and I picked raspberries and blueberries at the Bock Berry Farm, close to Iowa City, Iowa. When we began, I somehow sensed that a berry patch could teach me some things about love. Nature will grant us insights into life […]

Picking raspberries has some things in common with loving. I realized this a while ago when my wife and I spent an idyllic late afternoon in a raspberry patch. The weather was flawless, the fruit abundant and succulent, and our conversation as intermittent and intimate as the breezes which intertwined us. We joyfully, carefully labored […]

We all have our inner naysayers. We generally prefer not to talk about these harassing little daemons, though it can help us when we do. By “daemon,” I am not referring to some objective evil or the devil; I mean something akin to a computer virus, or a bacterium that can dis-ease our bodies. Healthy […]

“May every sunrise hold more promise, and every sunset hold more peace.” That is an anonymous blessing on a “quotable magnet” my wife and I purchased some years ago at a gift shop near what was then close to “ground zero” of the former World Trade Center in New York City. The blessing touched us […]

Treasure moments of pure love, moments when the fullness of your love for another arises and streams out of you, as if to surround the other. You experience a gravity-like bond between you, for which there are no words or means of measurement. And you sense that nothing in heaven or on earth can severe […]