The heart surrenders everything to the moment. The mind judges and holds back. In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight. When we see the Beloved in each person, it's like walking though a garden, watching flowers bloom all around us. Ram Dass   Several years ago I was suffering from odd heart palpitations and some tightness and pain in my chest area. "This is definitely a heart attack,"

On November 30, 2022, Generative Pre-trained Transformer (Chat GPT) was unleashed on the human population. I knew nothing about it and until recently I called it Chat GPS, confusing it (as I am wont to do with most technology) with another application that is also making us humans dumber and dumber - ever more reliant on that robot in our pocket to get from point A to point B. GPS (Global Positioning System) is a technology that I happily employ and which has unhappily destro

A week before Halloween I was having a casual dinner with a friend when I started, for no apparent reason, to get fidgety and irritated. Soon those feelings morphed inexplicably into being REALLY pissed off. I did an internal check (body, mind, and spirit) and found nothing amiss. My friend was certainly not the cause of my irritation; she's a good conversationalist and fun to be with. The food was fine and the crowd was lively. The lighting (my usual bugaboo) was soft and wa

Lately I’ve noticed that a new addiction has been sneaking up on me. Unfortunately, by the time I realized I was addicted it was too late. This addiction has been gaining steam and traction since the beginning of the Covid pandemic. I have become obsessed with one particular Reddit page that chronicles the daily nonsense and extreme dysfunction of one rapidly aging celebrity, his highly unstable and narcissistic wife, and their brood of unruly offspring. Of course this is a

My ninety year old mother fell. Again. This time she broke her leg. Or should I say her other leg; this is the second leg she has broken this year. My mother is tough as nails and she’ll recover. But it’s not just the recuperation weeks, it’s the time spent in the ER with her that I find grueling. “You know this is all bullshit,” she will inevitably say while we sit in a cold, sterile room waiting for someone to see us. “I have a broken leg. I can feel it. I just need to lie

Jim Gaffigan is one of my favorite comedians. His humor is dark but family friendly. Unlike a lot of male comedians today, he rarely talks about his sex life in graphic detail. I fully appreciate his discretion. But one thing he does talk a lot about is McDonald’s. "I reference McDonald’s a lot because I go to McDonald’s a lot," he said to a packed auditorium on one of his live specials. There was no response from the audience at all. They were silent. "Oh please!" he admonis