I notice something about men. It seems like there is often a wound they have in common: The Father Wound. Absent Fathers. Detached, emotionally veiled fathers. Angry, critical fathers. Fathers who held families regularly hostage with moods. In too many cases, physically threatening, aggressive and/or abusive fathers. Fathers who raged, degraded and hit their sons. Maybe … [Read more...]

Since I became a priest, and today as a professional counselor, people buy me little, popular wisdom books. By “little” I mean small. Sometimes as small in dimension as a CD, and not much thicker. By “popular” I mean the book is written by someone that has been a guest on Oprah, or have otherwise achieved commercial and popular momentum. By “wisdom” I mean the book is written … [Read more...]

I just finished Adjustment Day, by Chuck Palahniuk. Nope, I don’t know how to pronounce his last name, either. It’s fiction. A dystopian novel. More terrifying than my favorite childhood monster movies, of which I was a rabid fan. The book begins with a quote from one of the “founding fathers,” John Adams: “Remember, Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, … [Read more...]

Religion invites us to have faith. Thus, for most people, the idea of faith is a choice. We can have faith or not have faith. It’s all pretty simple and clear cut. But, if you pull the word “faith” out of its traditional religious confines and place it in a wider, existential view, it’s no longer an invitation. It’s unavoidable. Non-negotiable. You can’t not have … [Read more...]

Wise old sayings – my family was and is replete with them. What, for heaven’s sake, would we have put on our 1960’s dorm room posters without wise old sayings! We repeat them, rehearse them and believe them. They make our discourse colorful and interesting. Charles Dickens is perhaps one of my favorite writers of all time. Smart-smart-smart with the King’s English. In the … [Read more...]

If you read this column last week, you’ll recall the story I told of challenging my then 10 year-old son not to quit. Not to give up just because something was hard and uncomfortable. We must welcome and befriend discomfort. Enduring discomfort in service to becoming more. To learning and growing. To finding courage you didn’t know you had. Seven years later, my son threw … [Read more...]

My youngest son, Joseph, is 11 years-old. And he wants to be a football player. My boy takes me back in time. I was exactly his age when I joined a Pop Warner football team in Arizona. I remember serenading cicadas and the ache of humid, three-digit Sonoran summer nights. I remember running. And running and running and running. The grass was itchy. Mostly I remember being … [Read more...]

The good life is like a tightrope. It is stretched taut between birth and death, suspended over the abyss of potential chaos. Like a tightrope walker we inch forward, a bit to the left and a bit to the right, struggling to keep our … … BALANCE! Lose balance, and the tightrope walker plunges toward the sawdust floor. Lose our balance, and we find ourselves hurtling into all … [Read more...]