From the late Irish poet John O’Donohue: “Humans have an uncanny ability to domesticate everything they touch. Eventually, even the strangest things become absorbed into the routine of the daily mind with its steady geographies of endurance, anxiety, and contentment. Only seldom does the haze lift, and we glimpse for Read more…
By Portia Nelson Chapter 1I walk down the street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I fall in.I am lost … I am helpless.It isn’t my fault.It takes forever to find a way out. Chapter 2I walk down the same street.There is a deep hole in the sidewalk.I pretend I Read more…
This is a great statement from Virginia Satir about the demands of love: “One of the truly basic problems is that our society bases the marital relationship almost completely on love and then imposes demands on it that love can never solely fulfill. If you love me you won’t do Read more…
This particular passage from Henri Nouen has been very helpful for me lately. We often mistake the limitations of others as a judgement of our own value. In doing so, we miss an opportunity to sacrificially love and care for these people in our life. “You keep listening to those Read more…
When you’ve been alive for only five thousandeight hundredand twenty-nine days. The pathways are rarely clearhere wherethe roads keep changing. What makes senseon one daymakes nosense the next. And soto avoid exhaustionand to deepen restask yourself these questions.How would you describe today?And Have you seen anything interestingon the way?And Is it working?Is it Read more…
Practice makes progress, not perfection. Voltaire said it so well, “The perfect is the enemy of the good.” We are all in process. Not fully baked. Not quite done. Some of us are almost, but not yet there. We are all learners in different stages of our own growth process. Read more…
Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front by Wendell Berry Love the quick profit, the annual raise, vacation with pay. Want more of everything ready-made. Be afraid to know your neighbors and to die. And you will have a window in your head. Not even your future will be a mystery Read more…
I ran across an article about a chess player (Adam Robinson) who was in a chess development program for teens. He spoke of playing against Bobby Fischer (one of the greatest chess players in history). In playing Bobby, he would often lose. It was this short paragraph that struck me: Read more…
Below are six languages that help speak to the building of an intimate relationships. We cannot build healthy intimacy and thriving relationships without practicing some of the below ideas. As with anything in life, practice makes progress (not perfect!). Passion – This is the language of “I want and desire Read more…
You don’t have to have parents who were alcoholics to develop any (or a lot) of these characteristics. All of us grow up in homes with imperfect parents. We develop coping mechanisms from growing up in these sometimes “crazy” family systems. Many of these coping mechanisms are listed below. If Read more…