Recovery. Sobriety. Living Wise.
What are seeds of faith? I suppose the answer is different for each person, but for me, more often than not they come as small revelations in times of deep crisis when I’m grappling with forces pulling in opposite directions. For me, faith is not so much an idea but an identity, not so much about believing but becoming. Maybe an My teachers have generally been … Continue reading Finding Faith
I would rather walk with a friend in the dark than alone in the light. ~ Helen Keller How many walks? How many friends? I wonder. This past week I’ve had a tutorial on friendship. I watched in awe as two hundred friends gathered for my cousin Amy’s funeral as they came to give comfort to a grieving family. It was a moving scene, … Continue reading How Friends Sustain Us
Yet again, death has struck a member of my family — my cousin Amy, at 46. Death has visited our family all too frequently and all too early. My father died at 45, brother Steve at 59, brother Kevin at 62. We are a family of unfinished stories. Death leaves its mark when it comes unexpected and early. So many unspoken words So many unsung … Continue reading Passings and Epilogues
My stumbling block in early life was that I didn’t like living with questions. Not at all. In my world answers were the thing. Whether they were right or not was, to me, not the most important thing. What counted was that I had an answer to every question. All that changed one night in 1985 while sharing a bowl of kung pao … Continue reading A Path to Serenity
Forty years ago I met a “good one”: an old gentleman who ran a shoeshine stand in the Eastern Airlines Shuttle Terminal at LaGuardia Airport. I was never sure of his name but most people called him Pete. At the time the hourly shuttle between New York, Boston and Washington was among the busiest in the nation. Everyone was guaranteed a seat, No reservations needed, … Continue reading Tending to Your Own Business