A few years before children and my beloved minivan, I sit behind the wheel of my red Acura TSX in a line of cars waiting to enter a parking garage. Yet another opportunity to practice patience. Soon enough, I am next to the man in the booth. “$10,” he says. I give him a twenty […]
Spiritual Self Violence Read More »
Some. Experience. A certain type of experience I first remember having a certain type of experience in late 2007. Emmett is a wee-little one. Annie, not yet born. Jane and I are asleep in our bed. Sleeping as well as exhausted new parents sleep. The baby monitor alerts us to Emmett’s stirring. Jane nudges me,
Challah Limits Phone in hand, I upload a photo of a three-braided round and a five-strand long that just came out of my oven. Confirmation—“The large one looks really complex”—comes with a photo of hers. Coincidentally, this week, she, too, made a round and a long. Our Friday-night-challah-texting club started during the pandemic. “I experimented,”
Annie’s 14-year-old brother isn’t accompanying us on the trip to get Annie’s 12-year-old booster shot, so she’ll earn the front passenger’s seat automatically, without claiming it by saying, “Shotgun.” Our 2003 Odyssey’s bumper is attached with cable ties and flex tape. Jane says the minivan went from being ironic to an eye sore during COVID.
For the sake of learning, I’d like to ask you to consider the circumstances since the start of 2020 as a grand psychological experiment. Of course, it has not been. But considering how we might react if this were a lab experiment can help us find some great compassion for the difficulties we are experiencing
A sunburn and some thoughts about suffering I’m standing in the bedroom slathering a clear gel, from a white and green tube, on my very red left foot, left knee, and left thigh. I repeat the process with a creamy lotion, from a white and pink tube, on my very red right foot, right
Think about strawberry jam—the sweet, gooey, red stuff that gets slathered on toast. Or maybe a bagel. Strawberry jam. Yum. (Simple so far, no?) **Experts** In the 1980s, food technologists at Consumer Reports conducted extensive taste tests on 45 types of strawberry jam. That’s a lot of jams. The experts rated five jams as
The Jam of Thinking Read More »
Be kind. It’s more important than being right. “You can’t win an argument. You can’t because if you lose it, you lose it; and if you win it, you lose it.” ― Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People BEING RIGHT Let’s say someone says something you know just isn’t
WITHOUT SIN MY PEOPLE My people don’t do the original sin thing. We don’t grow up with this doctrine. We know about guilt; we’re Jews. My people create guilt masterpieces. But original sin—a human construct upon which many lives are unduly influenced—is far darker than guilt. Far darker. Guilt stems from having done something wrong.
Emotions 101 Emotions are feelings. They happen naturally. Emotions are our response to being alive. As we are human–alive and awake–we have interactions with the world, and we experience emotions. Expressing emotions in a healthy manner is the birthright of every human being. If we were lucky, in our childhoods, we had teachers who