Recovery. Sobriety. Living Wise.
This past year dear friends have experienced devastating losses and I’ve found myself struggling, yet again, with the most perplexing question of all, a question that has bedeviled man since he first scratched his feelings of frustration on to the walls of his cave dwellings, a question that keeps the world ablaze to this very day. The question of G-O-D. At one level it appeared to … Continue reading Rediscovering God
Originally published December 24, 2016 “Always winter but never Christmas.” ~ C S. Lewis The night A Charlie Brown Christmas premiered, on December 9, 1965, half of the American population watching television tuned in. At the time it was quite controversial, criticized for being: too religious, too jazzy, too offbeat, not having a laugh track using the voices of real children. In December of 1965 I … Continue reading A Charlie Brown Kind of Christmas
Where are the Good Men? Charlie Brown has always been for me an illustration of goodness, a kind of compass that points to true north. Before I got sober, I sometimes felt like Alice in Wonderland when she slipped down the rabbit hole: reality no longer mattered, truth had become fiction, good people were now bad, heroes now villains. When I climbed out from … Continue reading Finding Goodness
This week’s post was inspired by a recent conversation with Tucker McHugh, a high school classmate who I have known for over 50 years. I was raised on Wheaties, “The Breakfast of Champions.” Winning defined the purpose of my every endeavor: winning at school, winning at sports, winning with friends. Winning was symbolized by blue ribbons, gold stars, and A-pluses. Life was one long never-ending contest … Continue reading Failure is a Gift
[This is an edited version of the post, “A Thoughtful Heart,” originally published February 27, 2016.] L “A heart weary of hate cannot learn to love.” I came upon this quote, credited to a Russian poet, in a New York Times article written by Mikhail Shishkin, “How Russians Lost the War.” He was decrying the manner in which the Russian authorities were ratcheting up … Continue reading Seeing the World with Clear Eyes