
Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, Longform, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
March 24, 2022
Silence Might Be Golden, But Shouting Goes Platinum
Birds Of Paradise, Strange Fire, And Separating The Signal From The Noise...
Continue Reading

Another Way Of Looking At Things, Daily Life, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
March 16, 2022
To Forget And To Remember
There are some dark times that we commemorate in a ceremony with the reading of names. And there are some that result in celebrating with oily foods and candles. And there are some where we were so terrified, and now we are so out of our minds to have averted the decree, that we drink. We drink to forget. We don’t ever want to remember it was so awful. Blot out the memory. Forget the darkness. This is Purim. We tell our story of what we went through, and we are commanded......
Continue Reading

Breaking False Dichotomies, Compassion and Empathy, Longform, Mundane Into Sacred, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
March 10, 2022
Don’t Try To Be the Hero of Your Story
With two elementary-school-aged kids, we hear a fair amount of sibling fighting, with only some of it unprovoked. When one of them is getting a little too wild, and, say, someone’s limbs smack into someone else’s body, their first reaction is to say, “I didn’t mean to do it!” And while my wife and I do draw a distinction between purposeful versus accidental actions, we try to focus more on the consequences and how to make it right afterward. That’s what’s so striking about this week’s Torah portion, Vayikra. It outlines the......
Continue Reading

Compassion and Empathy, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized, Weekly Parsha |
February 18, 2022
Moral Leadership
The last few weeks have been strange in Canada. A convoy of angry citizens has taken their tractors, semi-trucks, and construction vehicles and established illegal blockades of border crossings in Ontario and other provinces and occupations of the entire neighborhood outside Parliament in Ottawa, as well as protests in other major Canadian cities. This development is anathema to much of what Canadians think of themselves – nice, friendly, reasonable people governed by prudence and shared responsibility. It seems like a sudden shock to many. Where did this come from? In this week’s......
Continue Reading

Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized, Uncategorized, Weekly Parsha |
January 28, 2022
Seeing the Unseen
Over the last few weeks, the astronomy world watched each step of the James Webb Space Telescope unfold. Aside from all the usual nervousness surrounding a rocket launch, there were 344 single-point failures as it tried to help us see farther, deeper, and more clearly into the reaches of deep space. Miraculously, each step worked exactly as planned – NASA was hoping things would go smoothly, but with rocket science, a lot can go wrong even if the mission is well-planned and designed. There was a palpable sense of relief as the......
Continue Reading

Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, Hold Dualities Together, Longform, Spirituality & Faith, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
January 20, 2022
Like a Hibernating Frog…
Waiting for the thaw...
Continue Reading

Another Way Of Looking At Things, Breaking False Dichotomies, Compassion and Empathy, Longform, Soul Writings, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
January 14, 2022
When Faith Preempts Facts
Our Torah is filled with stories of remarkable courage, leaps of faith, and ventures into the unknown. From Abraham leaving his homeland at God’s behest to his near-sacrifice of his son, we learn from our very first patriarch the ways that faith – often of the “blind” variety – is central to our collective story. But for all the dramatic leaps taken by our ancestors in scripture, one of them stands out among the rest. One of them, in fact, that isn’t even explicitly mentioned in Torah! After a treacherous race out......
Continue Reading

Another Way Of Looking At Things, Compassion and Empathy, Longform, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
January 07, 2022
The Plague of Uncertainty
Throughout Moses’ showdown with Pharaoh, there is one overarching, emotional plague that God wreaks upon the Egyptians: uncertainty. They do not know when the litany of discomforts, outrages, upsets, frustrations, pains, and fears will end. We gain insight into the Egyptian mindset just after Moses pronounces that God will bring locusts to eat whatever remains of the crops after the hail. Moses departs Pharaoh’s court and then we read (Exodus 10:7): “Pharaoh’s courtiers said to him, ‘How long shall this one be a snare to us? Let the people go to worship......
Continue Reading

Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, Longform, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
December 22, 2021
Here We Go Again?
I breathe slowly to calm my mind, I am breathing the air of March 2020. The doors feel like they’re closing once more....
Continue Reading

Another Way Of Looking At Things, Bring The Sacred Down To Earth, Compassion and Empathy, Longform, Relationships & Family, This Week In Wisdom, Uncategorized |
December 15, 2021
Everything I need to know about dying with dignity I learned from a houseplant
Life lessons from a dying plant...
Continue Reading