I am writing this post from Israel, having spent five days visiting our daughter (who is living here for the year), and I’m about to spend a week with a group of Protestant seminary students. But this post isn’t really about who I’ll be interacting with on my travels. It’s about the feeling I have in Israel – and one I hope we all have at special destinations which bring about the sensation of being at home, even when you’re far from your regular home base. Indeed, this is a feeling that......
Continue Reading
Spirituality & Faith, Wisdom Warehouse |
October 01, 2014
Repair and Reconciliation: Coming Back From a Broken Place
Two weeks ago, I wrote about an upcoming trip to Cuba and promised to report back. While I could not have known it before I went, my return, like this report, coming just before Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement – is so well timed. Synchronicity is a beautiful thing! Yom Kippur promises that there is no sin from which we cannot recover, and no rupture that cannot be repaired. But do we really believe that? Do we really treat ourselves, let alone others, as if that were true? It turns......
Continue Reading
I just returned from a week in Israel. And yeah, that means that I was there during the war with Hamas. In fact, the morning that we landed was the day that Hamas leadership pledged to resume rocket attacks on Israel’s Ben Gurion International Airport. I wasn’t traveling alone either. I was traveling with two of my daughters, one aged 13 and the other 18, who I was “dropping off” for a year of study at a Jerusalem seminary. So, am I some kind of crazy person who blithely wanders into war......
Continue Reading
“Nazis, Nazis, Nazis,” said Steve our 40 year-old, charismatic, Australian (by way of a half dozen countries) guide as we began a walking tour of Berlin, “that’s all most people think when they come to Berlin.” My family and I were in Berlin for a week – our first time in Germany – and Steve was so right. Berlin is young, hip, culturally rich, fun and edgy – and for the week we were there not fifteen minutes could go by without thinking Nazis, Third Reich, Holocaust. Memorials, museums, the guttural sound......
Continue Reading
I hate jet lag.? Hardly a provocative statement? – does anyone really like jet lag?? Who could possibly enjoy waking up at odd hours, or worse, falling asleep at dinnertime? ?But I wonder if there is anything to be learned from jet lag.? This week as I returned from a trip overseas, I began to realize that I could find some lessons in dealing with jet lag.? I realized that in using the practices I have discovered over the years to counteract jet lag, I could also apply them to some of......
Continue Reading
Daily Life, Wisdom Warehouse |
October 09, 2013
Does The Road to Wisdom Start With the Journey or the Destination
Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote, “To finish the moment, to find the journey’s end in every step of the road, to live the greatest number of good hours, is wisdom.” Making the journey as interesting as the destination sounds great, and there are some great tips in this article here. Ultimately though, when I think about this article in the context of Emerson’s quote, I wonder if it’s more about who we are in the inside than what we do or see on the outside, that determines whether we succeed at making......
Continue Reading
Business & Education, Wisdom Warehouse |
September 02, 2013
Attitude Adjustment: Bringing Positivity to the Workplace
What is your attitude towards work? This isn’t a trivial question, as how we approach our work is often the difference between being happy or miserable and always effects how people, be they colleagues or customers, family or friends, perceive us.? It is important that our work challenges us and is productive, that it adds value to the world and that we are remunerated fairly, but our attitude is determinative. Recently I experienced two people doing the exact same job with radically different attitudes. Brad and I were flying from Aspen to......
Continue Reading