I’ve done what I have done and everyone can be satisfied with my efforts, including — and most importantly — me. Continue reading
While Neil Armstrong was taking a giant leap for all mankind, I had taken a small step toward adulthood one month after the moon landing, and I had no one to thank for it except my brother, who encouraged me to aim for the stars in becoming an Officer and a Gentleman in the Army of the United States of America.
One of the most wonderful moments of my life occurred without my knowing it. Had I the presence of mind to be more present for things that mattered, I might not have missed it. Recalling what this once-in-a-lifetime occurrence must have been like, however, is the second-best way I know of memorializing it.  Continue reading
I didn’t want to go back to Omega Institute this year. Each time I travelled to this land of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle, I’d get high from the holistic experience. But then I’d change into an Ichabod Crane feeling chased by the Headless Horseman, who’d tell true-life stories that caused so much pain I couldn’t hold it inside. Continue reading
Cleaning a pot can be very meaningful, particularly if you block out all thoughts and concentrate on nothing but you and the instrument that has helped provide you with so much nourishment.  Continue reading
Death entered my life recently and I’ve felt so alive with its presence.  Continue reading
I get such a high while exercising that I can’t imagine why I haven’t done this more often in life.  Continue reading
A black and blue mark developed on my chest, and I didn’t notice it until a fellow swimmer pointed it out while I was in a pool at the gym. The mark is a full inch in diameter, and I would gladly take on a half-dozen more for the immense benefit the initial bruising provided me.
There is a tradition in Eastern philosophies where you’re taught to view each person and other sentient being as if he, she – or it is your mother. I never knew how nurturing this could be until I allowed the child in me to reciprocate and bask in the most secure and loving place.  Continue reading
Saying you’re sorry can be downright scary.
After chanting a non-English mantra for some time, I finally learned its definition and discovered a gem of wisdom while contemplating its meaning. Meditating will never be the same, and I want to share with others a little of the enlightenment it’s provided me.
Reality shifted on me the other day, and it helped me realize that I have more control than my “resifted” thoughts allowed me to see. Now, with a “time-control outlook,” I can try to change my world for the better.  Continue reading
Actively seek out someone in your church, synagogue or temple and befriend him so that what happened in Philadelphia last week never happens again.  Continue reading
The damn branch broke my concentration. I had not planned for an overhanging tree limb to block the pathway, walking three-quarters of a mile from my home to the train station, with my head facing my feet the entire time.
It’s time for my disappearing act to begin. I close my eyes, wave an imaginary magic wand, and slowly begin to vanish from existence here. All thoughts and fears come to an end as I find protection beneath a cloak of invisibility, safe from the savages outside and the demons within.  Continue reading
Ever wonder what life was like for ancestors living fifty, a hundred or even 200 years ago?
I can think of many ways to stop a bad habit without having to suffer a stroke that goes untreated for years and years.  Continue reading
How’d you like to go back in time and correct mistakes made in the past? No, you couldn’t go back to the moment before you were conceived, or any other time in your far distant past. Go back to more recent moments – say in the past year or two — when you believed you knew so much about life and how to live it without doing harm to others.  Continue reading
I can think of no worse place to be than in a church, a temple, or a synagogue when an unbidden and involuntary giggle would invade my psyche and take control of me. A “giggle” is too mild a word: uncontrollable laughter would rise to the level of guffaws and downright knee-slappers, right at the most somber parts of a religious service. Continue reading
The one and only time I stood before an all-women jury, I ended up asking for a mistrial after the judge and prosecutor entered the jury deliberation room without my knowledge and in violation of the sequestration rule to safeguard against jury tampering.  Continue reading
“Did you hear what I said? I’m pregnant.
Aren’t you going to say anything Joseph?”
I saw more of the Divine in a beggar on the road to Calvary last year than I did in the three religions occupying Jerusalem. The beggar’s blindness beamed into me, and I’ll never forget the look on his face as I offered him Israeli shekels, and he bowed to me in thanks.
Continue reading
“Warriors have been rewarded for their service or their families have been provided support, since the beginning of organized society.
My best friend died before I could tell him how much he meant to me. Continue reading
I want to give “thanks” today, but don’t want to offer it the Norman-Rockwell, “fake-it-‘til-you-make-it” way of the holidays. Instead, I want to share how grateful I am for such taken-for-granted “gifts” that I am only beginning to realize most of us have been given. Continue reading
On this Veterans Day, 11-11-11, what would you tell yourself if you could go back in time and greet that young man recently returned home from the war?
When I read the Occupy Wall Street demonstrators were unfocused and without a coherent message, I took a closer look at them in Philadelphia, and discovered some were disheveled street persons looking for handouts, and one was a graduate school political science major spouting Marxist teaching.
The greatest protest of our generation is seeking change in all shapes and sizes. You can see it in the signs the demonstrators carry, writing the letters out really big with magic markers so that passersby need not squint to get the messages.
As my world started to close in on me, demanding its immediate attention toward responsibilities, affairs of work, and needs in my house, I found an oasis inside of myself and in the thoughts of friends in my Kabbalah group.
Tone it down, America. You are cutting off your nose to spite your face. The face of the body politic, that is, we are creating needless hurt for the countrymen we’d like to lead to our mutual goal: the pursuit of happiness.  Continue reading
I saw you as a little girl with a smile as bright as Shirley Temple, a chocolate-haired “Annie,” a young Rosie Perez.
How many times have you heard this? How many times have you said it? “Give something back.” Not sure what that “something“ is, but you know you got it, and you got a “need” to share “it.”
Another Reality exists within the here and now, if I can disengage and step out of the World that I am sleep-walking in.
The excitement would start while half asleep, tossing and turning, waiting for morning to jump out of bed, freshen up, and make my way downstairs to discover my latest surprise.
“To Dance with My Father Again.”
Never thought an affair I had with a married woman before turning 21 would qualify for “conduct unbecoming,” but looking back, I see how conflicted parties to such an act could become.
“Make yourself a Rav, and buy for yourself a friend.”
— Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Perachya
All these feelings flashed through me as I slowly came out of what seemed like a trance, halfway between sleep and wakefulness, only to notice growth at a part of my body where there was none before.
“I love you” was not in the way you said it, but how you said it.
Bless me Father, for I have sinned. I have cursed out drivers on the open highway and prayed their mothers had never conceived them. In or at of wedlock, those dirty b . . . . . .
When my father spoke Greek with the disciplinarian of the Catholic High School where I played hooky at age 14, I thought I had it made.
Continue readingEach day for twenty years, the spirit of Don Quixote welcomed me into my law office. This picture hung above my desk reminding me that it was the “impossible cases” a good public defender relished. The ones you didn’t expect to win, but somehow, now and then, you’d convince a jury to see the facts your way, which in most cases, was the right way.
Continue reading
Thank You Amy. Let the Good Times Roll!Music touched an emotional chord in me that may have been different from most folks.
Rain pours on me outside, while soft music warms me on the inside. “Abraham, Martin, and John,” the song, plays from this relatively new gadget called a portable, hand-held, transistor radio.
What’s the difference between Shame and Embarrassment? Are they joined at the hip? Like twins?
How do I explain the feelings that have come “over me?” They’re like ocean waves ebbing and flowing in each breath. Continue reading
I felt like Alice falling in the hole after chasing a White Rabbit. But, falling “upwards” defying the laws of Gravity and Rational Sense.
Got Blanket Absolution yesterday. And, it felt so good, I became a 12-year-old again. Ready to face the world with a clear conscious and a pure heart.
How do you explain “unexplainable” events?
Although you “passed on” after your 17th birthday, you’ll remain alive for me forever. I see you in my dreams. I “feel” your presence as I walk with you, watch you, and hear the footsteps on the steps leading from the dining room to the bedroom upstairs.
The hawk glides across the sky, soaring high above us as the first person to notice shouts, “there’s one.” Like children, we stare toward the heavens, at the beautiful blue sky. A normally humid August has graced us with a mild and glorious summer day, blending light breezes and the scent of flowers that drift our way from below the wooden platform we look out from.
Hello! Anybody here? It sure is dark inside. Like a huge cavern with hardly any light.
Fell head over heels in love the past few weeks. Didn’t want to do it. Had always gotten “hurt” in relationships, knowing from the start they’d come to an end one day. Love seemed to change that way. To peter out. End not with a “bang,” but with a “whimper.”
I started seeing angels again. No, hold off on the straight jacket, don’t reserve a room at an asylum. I’m not totally crazy. Yet . . .
Did the Creator make a mistake in His design of women’s “purpose?“
Thought I was dying Monday morning.
The Greatest Weekend — No. II
Glenda “laid hands” on me; I lost track of who I was and why!
The bottle of Listerine spilled, and the car smelled of antiseptic. A ‘57 Chevy should never suffer such an indignation.
“The Crossing” filled me with sounds of the Rapture last night as I surrendered to the harmonies some 25 voices offered me on entering Heaven. Continue reading
Walked a Labyrinth and stepped back into the Vietnam War last night.
Trouble is . . . I liked it. Did not want to leave the maze despite what lay ahead. Strangely, I felt “safe” there. Secure in my “skills.” Didn’t want to come home. Just like years earlier.
An eerie silence greeted me as I opened my bathroom door, stepped inside, and looked at the window facing the yard. I had just woken up. This, the first morning without a rooster in my daily life.
“You want mutard?,” the Pretzel Man would ask as he took your nickel and broke off three little “figure eight” soft pretzels. “Yes,” I’d say, mouthwatering for a topping that would make Philadelphia soft pretzels one of the great snacks of the Western World.
I never felt more like Don Quixote than when I represented a woman charged with a crime.
Wasn’t sure a Gospel Song would fit in with Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs) at a music appreciation meet last week.
Not the ones from a bottle. A soda fountain drink! Nothing compares to the delicious mixture of “realchocolate” and cherry syrups combined with that seltzer-like substance that produced a drink that could have originated only in Paradise.
Continue readingI always looked up to Al Brown. I met him when I was only eight-and-a-half years old in the 1950s.
I never took my eyes off the gun. The man’s hand shook. I was afraid it would go off. Raising my own hands, I prayed that he would not shoot, and said “I’m coming out,” slowly climbing out of the window, placing one foot on the ground and then the other as I exited the ACME supermarket warehouse building two blocks from my home. Continue reading
I feel a healing begin, as tears form, and I am so grateful to release what’s building inside — something so wonderful it becomes too good to contain.
Read some comments attacking the Dalai Lama on someone’s Blog which championed freedom of religion on its website.
One of the most humbling times in my life occurred in Court.
The detective hit me across the face with a back hand, and I knew I was in trouble.
Sundance sneezed five times. Shouldn’t have surprised me. I “felt” I was helping her as she lay across my legs, jettisoning hundreds of microscopic objects onto my leg and arm where her small furry head had just rested.  Continue reading
Mister JR Johnson fired me when he caught me “entertaining” friends at his place of business.
I was in the Army less than a week when the news hit me. I had my head shaven; my civilian clothes exchanged for fatigue pants and a shirt, not to mention boots and headgear, something I had never worn before in my life.
Got drafted on the Third of June, the day that Billie Jo McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge! I was 19 years old in 1968 — knew no one — and was away from my Philadelphia, PA, home for the first time.
