“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live...
The most effective mind-shifting, gratitude-awakening thought I have is when I ask myself to seriously consider how many more times I will have to do the thing right in front of me. I remember reading this thought somewhere where the author realistically assessed just how many more nights like this one would you see a sunset that makes your jaw drop? I can’t remember how many nights I watched my...
“Love your curves and all your edges, all your perfect imperfections…” -John Legend
Sometimes I begin believing that my philosophy of love and relationships is so outmoded that I am an oddball relic from some historic past when love reigned. And then, just like that, out of one of my teenagers’ room, I hear a new song wafting under the door and it catches me in the hall – knowing the voice but not...
I have been working on the completing the Positive Change courtyard at South Eugene High School for over 3 years now. Like the long- awaited ending of most things, the resources of time, money and people have run thin and I, like most everyone else, is ready to move on. Unexpectedly, I have had an offer from a small group of boys who have taken on building furniture for the courtyard as their...
“Motherhood has a very humanizing effect. Everything gets reduced to essentials.” -Meryl Streep
If you haven’t yet seen the replay of Kevin Durant dedicating his MVP award to his mother, I urge you to look for this rare, heartfelt tribute to mothering. The selflessness that this NBA star demonstrates for those who have held him up is a direct testament to the loving embrace in which his mother...
“…won’t regret what I did for love. Love is never gone. As we travel on, love’s what we’ll remember.” -A Chorus Line
When I was 16, the drama club at my high school performed A Chorus Line. The song “What I Did For Love” still pops into my head with the full band behind it and I can remember viscerally my own heartfelt renditions in the backstage tending to props, wondering how, when, and if I...
“So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.” -W. Clement Stone
Starting things is hard. It explains why so many great ideas go unrealized. To begin, you have to become comfortable with the discomfort of the unknown, to embrace the truth that even the best laid plans often don’t hold up to the uncertainty and chaos that...
“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”-Buddha
Our first response to rejection of any kind is usually shame. It comes out looking like anger and a story of betrayal. It...
Lately, I am having to do a lot of practice with going through the motions of my Positivity work. Meditation, usually a deep solace, is hard to stay focused. I drift into thoughts and concerns for half my time and then awaken to what I have missed. Likewise, with my exercise routines, my clogged head feels like it is dead weight on a body that is weak. My emotions and thoughts pull me back over...
When All That’s Left Is Love
by Rabbi Allen S. Maller
When I die
If you need to weep
Cry for someone
Walking the street beside you.
You can love me most by letting
Hands touch hands, and Souls touch souls.
You can love me most by
Sharing your Simchas (goodness) and
Multiplying your Mitzvot (acts of kindness).
You can love me most by
Letting me live in your eyes
And not on your mind.
And when you...
There are a couple of immutable rules to living a love-filled life, which demand respect and compliance. Although they are simple, they are hard to recognize, as our misunderstanding of them is often built into our identities through early emotional wounds. It is easy to become self righteous about what we believe about love and easier still to never understand that the action of love is the...
Immortality comes through love. This is what I just recently learned at the passing of my own father’s life. It had been close to 40 years since I felt love towards him. His wounded heart only knew one language- anger, and over the years it hardened into a bitterness that made it unsafe to love him. But now that he is gone, I am struck often, and forcefully, with tears of missing him, the father...
