My 83 rd birthday was approaching when I noticed that I wasn’t smiling. At least not as much. I was surprised at first. Smiling’s the practice I resisted. Hokey. Bogus. Smiling was Thich Nhat Hanh’s idea. Reminded me of the elementary school cliches. “Smile and the world smiles with you.”  “Let a smile be your umbrella.” “When you walk through a storm.” Thay said, “Smile,” and I said, “Bullshit.” No way I was going to sit on my cushion smiling. I was intense about righting s

You’re telling me you have no time for spiritual practice. Otherwise, you’d give Zen a try. No time for prayer. Not even thirty minutes a day. Sit with that awareness. How unimportant you make yourself. It’s time for a change.   I don’t remember now who turned me on to Cardinal Bernardin’s Gift of Peace , but it must have been shortly after its publication in 1997. For me, his most powerful teaching was the observation that, when you really need it, it’s too late to develop a

It’s only now – in my second “retirement” – that I am actually stepping back, and that is taking much more getting used to than I’d expected. This is a real shift.   My old sociology teacher, Alan Blum, wrote an article years ago about social problems. I was a social worker getting a doctorate in sociology, so this was a paper that spoke to me. “What is a social problem?” Alan asked. He answered that a social problem was something that somebody had better do something about.