Good Clean Reads

Media stories of childhood sex abuse have filled the airwaves of late; from the Penn State trial of Jerry Sandusky to the ongoing Catholic Church scandals to the first conviction of a high ranking church official. While these stories stir our outrage, their telling and re-telling truly only reflect the tip of the iceberg when it comes to both the enormity and secrecy surrounding childhood sexual...

“All it takes to feel loved is to love. We always have the power to feel love. As soon as we stop loving we often don’t feel loved anymore.”  -Betty Peralta

 

For all the years that I have thought and written about love, it is remarkable to me that I only just recently learned how my own thinking has prevented me from seeing the love in my own life for decades. We all create a storyline that our...

I have been studying gratitude as a the open door to a positive life and one of the most profound vehicles to love for some time. As part of my research, we have had an ongoing contest asking our readers to share their own stories of how gratitude has transformed their own lives and relationships. Here is an unforgettable story of gratitude.

I embrace the gift of how my life has developed from...

One of the greatest gifts of the work I do is hearing the inspiring stories from our readers about how they make love work in their personal lives and career. Learning how to receive the goodness and love surrounding us is a lifelong process and, even as children, we must learn that we are worthy and loveable. Here is one fine teacher’s method which could be adapted to your own family. Thanks for...

It is unusual for a newly installed bee hive to experience a bee swarm, and even more unusual for a new beekeeper to witness it happening. In fact, in the couple of weeks since my bees executed their escape, several people I know who have kept bees for over a decade have told me they have never seen it. Truly, it was a remarkable occurrence. I am rarely at home midday and even less rarely sitting at the only window that would have given me the view. In truth, I was sitting on my bed, looking at this screen...

 “The act of smelling something, anything, is remarkably like the act of thinking. Immediately at the moment of perception, you can feel the mind going to work, polling one center of the brain after another for signs of recognition, for old memories and old connection.” – Lewis Thomas

 

Our sense of smell is ancient; primal as well as the source of our most powerful emotional memories. This is...

Total sexual freedom – the idea that we can love and be loved in ways that don’t fit neatly in a normative box – is different from indiscriminate sex.

From the outside looking in, this might be confused with promiscuity. What’s the difference? I believe promiscuity feeds into and manifests fears, limitations and restrictions. Sexual freedom is about courage.

First of all, fear is a great teacher....

The best moments in my life are the ones that I am connected to the people around me. They are the moments when I am not wondering about anywhere else or worried about what comes next. This place of full presence is a magical one because when you find yourself in it, life is good. Even in a crisis or emergency when clock time is meaningless, we are left only with what is and we have only now....

“In every man’s heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.” -Christopher Morley

 

Beauty is one of the essential graces of living a human life on earth. Beauty is around us everywhere and entraining our own capacity to notice and recognize its presence and its power to transform us begins in our heart. Culturally, we are constantly being mis-directed to a specific, and...