A famous Zen koan asks, “Does a dog have a Buddha nature? The answer is Stop! – stop thinking. Brother David Stendl Rast says “stop!” as well. He asks, “Do you want to be happy?” His answer is, ”Be grateful.” He boils it down to “Stop, Look, Go.” Stop what you are doing. Look around for something to be grateful for, then go back to what you were doing.[1] For example, Stop: I stopped writing this blog post just now. Look: I looked out the window and was grateful for

Things are still pretty horrible this week! Yet there are signs of hope – order emerging from disorder. Young people joining older neighbors with brooms to clean up streets in front of looted storefronts. GoFundMe campaigns to compensate small businesses for their losses. Order arising out of disorder. Fr. Richard Rohr ends his latest (and to my mind best) book, The Universal Christ, by discussing what he believes to be a universal pattern of life moving from order, though

A 49-year-old man choked by police for more than eight minutes! Peaceful demonstrations and violent looting in major cities. Pandemic deaths in the US exceeding 100,000. A dam breaking in Michigan, flooding a town; other failures predicted. Locusts in Africa. 40 million people on unemployment. Hungry children throughout the world. The horror! It is important to give ourselves permission to stay aware of our revulsion at the unimagina-ble suffering around us. It is thr

When I am at my most vulnerable, I'm sad about what I've lost with this pandemic. Some groups I've been involved with that gave my life meaning are in hiatus. I’ve lost income. I miss special trips to New York for theatre and lunches with friends. I miss my gym! What do you miss? Take a moment to consider your losses. Our losses are real. They can stir up anxiety and stress. You probably know that gratitude is an important way of coping with stress and anxiety. How is