The V-Word

“Love is like a friendship caught on fire. In the beginning a flame, very pretty, often hot and fierce, but still only light and flickering. As love grows older, our hearts mature and our love becomes as coals, deep-burning and unquenchable.” -Bruce Lee

I have been working out a life with the same guy for 30 years. When I try to remember the girl who fell for him at 19, I feel like I am telling a...

“Hunger also changes the world – when eating can’t be a habit, than neither can seeing” -Maxine Hong Kingston

As part of the observance of Yom Kippur, we fast. Bearing witness to hunger today and of how my thoughts were consumed by the visceral experience of physical emptiness made me recognize again the weight of the issue of world hunger. The statistics of the hungry are so overwhelming, so...

Tonight marks the beginning of the Jewish day of Atonement. Yom Kippur, the day of fasting and seeking forgiveness, is perhaps the highest holy day of the year. The teaching goes that the process of forgiveness begins with the approach or the asking, followed by a pardon by others, enclosed by atonement with the divine. The beauty of this holiday is the promise of redemption, that regardless of...

“Pick battles big enough to matter, small enough to win.” -Jonathon Kozol

Most of the arguments that couples have about their sex lives are not about sex. Sex is the container, where we are most acutely aware of the spaces in our relationship that fail to connect, that make us feel small, unloved, invisible, and that reflect our deepest conflicts. It is a little ironic that our potential for our...

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.” ~Anne Frank

I need to change the world outside of my head these days. The sweeping changes going on inside of me need some external markers. I am going after the spaces that have been crying to me unheard for many months now. My overgrown garden, full of self-seeded mess was the first place to clean....

“Whatever you do, or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it….Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world.” -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

For over 20 years I have had this quote hanging on my wall, “Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness....

Announcing our new Modern Love monthly segment co-hosted by loveologist Wendy Strgar and international love muse Tina Marie Bernard. Share in their lively conversation, exploring all the ways to make love work and avoid the many pitfalls that consume and burn out modern loving relationships. Don’t miss this refreshing and nourishing view of how to sustain your loving relationship with grace and...

“A restaurant is a fantasy-a kind of living fantasy in which diners are the most important members of the cast.” Warner LeRoy

Some days even the very best of intentions go sideways. Tonight we decided to try the new Italian restaurant in town. The place was elegant for our town and the food was said to be exquisite. We waited 20 minutes to be seated with the explanation that some big parties had...

“When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.”  ~Kahlil Gibran

My youngest daughter can read me like a book. She knows my sorrow and always wants to fill me up when she sees it in how I stand, or in my eyes. For all my discussion of feeling your feelings and letting them wash over you, I too have my reticence...