flawed but authentic

One time my mom asked me how I could remember the Latin names of plants so well. I said “Well, plants are like my friends and I don’t forget the names of my friends.”
And I had someone say “When I am driving, I always see you walking to work in the morning.”
I said, “That’s funny. [...]

“You are special” “You’re a special mom” “On your special day” the cards say. We all want to be special.
I find my peace in learning that I am not special. I am pretty much the same as everyone else. We all want the same things underneath it all: to be free from fear and from [...]

I have met with a weekly spiritual study group on and off for a decade. We study “A Course in Miracles,” but I have come to believe that the benefit for the group members is not so much the topic we study as it is in the time we spend together.
I think that just having [...]

My old housemate Dana was a flight attendant on those little puddle-jumper airplanes. Her typical day would be something like: San Luis Obispo to Los Angeles International. Los Angeles International to Bakersfield. Bakersfield to San Diego. Little hops with cranky people who were anxious about making their connection in time.
We often talked about how people [...]

I think I have mentioned StoryCorps here before – a mobile recording studio that goes around the United States, collecting true stories for archival in the Library of Congress.
Every Friday on the way to work, I hear the StoryCorps music at the end of the local NPR station’s broadcast of “Morning Edition.” I pull into my [...]

We tend to see teaching as a profession, but A Course in Miracles says ”Everyone teaches, and teaches all the time.”
 Every moment of every day, we are teaching those we encounter and ourselves what we believe about the world. We are also teaching the world how to treat us.
My friend Ken eats a lot of burritos, [...]

My sister Laura had a highly visible illness, multiple sclerosis. She spent the last dozen years of her life in a wheelchair, progressing from a non-powered one at the beginning to one she could steer with her chin at the end because it got so that the only part of her body she could move [...]