Everyone else in the hotel has their plans for the day and we have ours. People look at you a little funny and with a tinge of pity when they see you dressed in funerary garb. The limo arrives at the house. We check to see if it has lathes for car seats. We head […]
Relationships
Death (Day 2)
All of a sudden it’s a new day. I guess it’s obvious but you only have one date of death. Quickly time starts to accumulate. Today my daughter got a napkin and wiped tears from my wife’s eyes. Then she sat in my father in law’s oversized arm chair and said it felt like he […]
Death
My wife was out running the Peachtree Rod Race. And making good time. My phone rang. It was my mother in law. She rarely calls me directly. I answered the phone and she told me through her tears that Jim, her husband, had died. I called Loren, still recovering at the finish line. I have […]
Letting Go
My daughter recently turned 6. She was excited to turn 6. She loved being 5. She’s already thinking about being 7. It’s clear that she views her turning 6 as a major milestone and life accomplishment. It’s also clear that she had no problem letting go of 5. Watching her go to sleep a 5 […]
Remind
The deepest truths of human experience and reality can’t be taught. They can’t be acquired. Uploaded. Downloaded. Inputed. Scanned. Computed. Etc. They’re already there, in the inmost place where things sometimes find themselves forgotten, disregarded, shunned, or otherwise put out of mind. You and I already know them. Whether we’ve been too preoccupied to meditate on […]
Everyday holiness
There’s long been a distinction in Judaism between “Kodesh” (“Holy”) and “Chol” (“Profane/Mundane”). In fact, the Havdalah Service at the end of Shabbat includes a blessing that thanks God for distinguishing between these two different states- Kodesh and Chol. The distinction comes from the fact that the rabbis of ancient times thought that part of […]