How to Observe a New Year in the Autumn

How to observe the Jewish New Year

The Jewish New Year comes in the autumn, at a time when things are not new at all but old. Here in Northern California, everything is brown and dry from the drought. Around most of the United States. the trees are turning colors and dropping leaves. Everything is going dormant. It’s a bit like a [...]

Do You Recognize the Blue Moon Events in Your Life?

blue moon nasa

The sky here in Northern California is clear and bright. Tonight, August 31, 2012, I’ll be able to see the blue moon. When two full moons occur in any calendar month, the second is called a blue moon. The term (in its modern usage) has nothing to do with the moon’s color. A blue moon [...]

Can You Really Let Go?

Are you able to let go?

“Can you really let go?” I asked myself this question today when I left my son a long message on Facebook telling him I was basically “cutting the apron strings” and letting him handle his own stuff. To a great extent, I have not choice but to let go; he’s in Germany. I can’t  help [...]

Cleaning to Take Control of My Life

How to take control of your life

A strange thing happens to me when my life feels out of control in any way. I start cleaning. I don’t mean just dusting and vacuuming. I don’t do that much of that. (I admit that the one splurge I allow myself in my life is a person who actually cleans the house every two [...]

Getting Started is the Hard Part

It gets easier once you've started an activity, so just start.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how hard it can feel to begin something new, like the exercise program I keep saying I will take on or the daily schedule I will keep to. Here’s the thing: Complaining about it only makes it worse. And getting started is the hard part. After you start, [...]

How Do You Know When It’s the End?

Not that long ago I went to see the movie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I have to admit, I’d seen the trailer (below) and was charmed by it in many ways but in particular by a line said by one of the main characters, Sonny, who, as it turns out says this several times [...]

Every Moment is a Celebratory Moment

It's important to celebrate the moments of your life.

How often do you celebrate small thing, daily events, typical moments? I have to admit, I don’t do this often enough if at all. Sometime I don’t even celebrate the big moments. When I got my book contract, I remember putting the celebration off. I had so much work to do to finish the book [...]

Can You Find Your Way Back Home?

seals

This past weekend I went to Ano Nuevo State Park to see the elephant seals. We were disappointed to discover that the adult male and female seals had already finished their mating season and taken to the sea. All that were left on the dunes were the “weaners,” the newly weaned babies, and some juvenile [...]

Finding Your Way Back Home

Sometimes life takes us in unexpected directions. We find ourselves walking paths we didn’t plan. We find ourselves far from home–both physically and spiritually. Over the last few years, I’ve been led away from my spiritual path by the business of my life. My organized religious life fell away as I focused on my children, [...]

What Constitues a Disaster Lies in the Eyes of the Beholder

Town washed away in Japanese Tsunami

Two days after the tremendous earthquake in Japan I was watching the news. I don’t actually watch the news that often, but I wanted to see what was happening in Japan and also how the tsunami had affected the California coastline. I had heard that Santa Cruz, just 20 minutes from where I live–had born [...]