As I step off the train into the flow of foot traf­fic, wheel­ing my unwieldy suit­case behind me, I am keenly aware that I look like a tourist. Yet, this is my city; the sounds and smells are as famil­iar to me as ever; the exhaust fumes and warmth gen­er­ated by hun­dreds of bod­ies wel­come me home. I join the herd of com­muters and vis­i­tors climb­ing the stairs from the plat­form to the lower con­course, and I can hear jazz music being played on a key­board: Gabriel Aldort leans for­ward into the micro­phone and his husky voice fills the room. It takes me a few beats to real­ize that he has switched to a Billy Joel song. I pic­ture the album cover in my mind, and lean against the pil­lar to enjoy the melody and the mem­ory. He takes a short break to chat with a tran­sit cop, and I round the pil­lar to get a closer look at his set-up. His key­board cover, open on the floor in front of him, is quickly fill­ing with sin­gles and a few fives. There is a photo of an infant, and next to it a sign indi­cat­ing that he is an MTA Arts Read the Rest…

When I was a baby, I knew how to hide in the space between elec­trons. Peo­ple saw me bounc­ing and laugh­ing, but they had no idea where I was hid­ing. Even today when I go there, I can’t find any me. But it’s not an escape, because this infi­nite space is every­where. Didn’t we all dwell in bound­less Sat­sang once, before the tech­ni­cians of the finite, whom we call adults, drove us out of God’s gar­den? Now we mea­sure eter­nity in hours and micro-seconds. We divide our vast­ness into inches. We have become mea­sur­ers, which we call being edu­cated. The truly impor­tant ques­tions, the vast ques­tions, the sim­ple ques­tions, have been edu­cated out of us: “What are we mea­sur­ing? Hours of what? Inches of what? ” We have no idea what the world is actu­ally made of. All day, we stum­ble through our duties with­out know­ing what any­thing really is. Sir Arthur Edding­ton, one of the founders of quan­tum physics, wrote: “All through the phys­i­cal world runs that unknown con­tent which must surely be the stuff of our con­scious­ness.” Ein­stein devel­oped the the­ory of rel­a­tiv­ity after a day­dream: fan­ta­siz­ing what it would feel like to ride on a sun­beam. But in Read the Rest…

I would stop rac­ing, stop com­pet­ing – cuz it’s not a race. I would devote WAY fewer jour­nal pages to plan­ning and schem­ing and WAY more to free asso­ci­at­ing, dream­ing and doo­dling – the kind of dream­ing that leads, not to plans or short term goals but to vision. Given that, I’d drop all of my goals and sift through them for my one theme. One story. One uni­fy­ing vision that includes them all. I would strive to live my life, every moment, every day, align­ing to that vision. I would let prov­i­dence work its magic, deliv­er­ing peo­ple and oppor­tu­ni­ties to my doorstep, lay­ing gifts at my feet – because it would, it does. The moment we align with a vision that’s wor­thy of us, prov­i­dence aligns with it too. With a pen and paper handy, I would ask myself these soul ques­tions: What do I obsess about? What keeps call­ing to me? What am I drawn to, in a way that I can­not explain? Are these obses­sions in ‘shadow’ or in ‘light’? I would reverse shadow obses­sions to light – and obsess about them that way. What do I wish would hap­pen? Is this a wish that I am hop­ing some­one else will activate/make real? I Read the Rest…

I first met Madeleine L’Engle in a writ­ers’ work­shop she was lead­ing at a New York City con­vent when I was try­ing to sell my first novel. She was very com­pli­men­tary about my writ­ing and in a burst of dar­ing, I asked, “Will you read my unpub­lished novel?” She hes­i­tated a moment and then said, “Yes.” And I think I ran the forty blocks home, my feet not touch­ing the ground. It was a warm Octo­ber night in 1989. She loved the novel and sub­mit­ted it to her own pub­lisher who did not take it, but she endorsed my work, and when Nicholas Cooke: actor, sol­dier, physi­cian, priest was accepted by W.W. Nor­ton two years later, she sent me an enor­mous bunch of flow­ers. She rec­om­mended notable peo­ple to blurb for the novel. But more than that, she became my friend and I adored her. Many small writ­ers’ sup­port groups grew out of that annual work­shop, and once a year we’d all gather for a pot luck din­ner at her house, one of those rare old New York apart­ments with a view of the Hud­son River, posters of her late actor hus­band in the kitchen, and long hall­ways lined with books. Read the Rest…

Some­times the sim­plest things can make the biggest dif­fer­ence. In her debut book, 1,000 Mitz­vahs, author Linda Cohen gives the rest of us a path to fol­low if we want to reg­u­larly help out oth­ers. A mother of two chil­dren, ages 10 and 13, she also teaches par­ents how to pro­mote but not force the idea of giv­ing to their off­spring. Cohen, 43, of Port­land, Ore., man­ages to not sound preachy in her book, released on Nov. 1 by Seal Press, and aptly sub­ti­tled “How Small Acts of Kind­ness Can Heal, Inspire, and Change Your Life.” She set a goal of per­form­ing 1,000 mitz­vahs after her father died of lung can­cer at age 70 in 2006. It took her more than two years to meet her goal, and in her book, she clearly describes each mitz­vah, no mat­ter how big or small. Author Linda Cohen Cohen, who has been both a pro­fes­sional and lay leader in the Jew­ish com­mu­nity, also is open about mitz­vahs that go well and those that are much tougher to do. In her case, giv­ing blood does not fall neatly into her com­fort zone. Cohen, who blogged about each mitz­vah, did not set out to write a book Read the Rest…

I was never emo­tion­ally attached to Steve Jobs in the way many of his fans were, though I have cer­tainly admired his Her­culean tech­ni­cal accom­plish­ments. But his untimely death, just before Yom Kippur—the Jew­ish Day of Atonement—has awak­ened some strong and unex­pected feel­ings in me. From what I have read of Mr. Jobs, he had a spir­i­tual side to his per­son­al­ity that was less pub­li­cized and less obvi­ous than his inven­tive and man­age­r­ial genius. Robert Thur­man, a pro­fes­sor of Bud­dhist stud­ies who met Jobs in the 1980s, has noted Jobs’s inter­est in Bud­dhism, and in the “Zen vision” of sim­plic­ity. But I was struck most force­fully by Jobs’s reflec­tions on human mor­tal­ity, in a com­mence­ment speech he deliv­ered June 12, 2005, at Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity. (June 12 just hap­pens to be my birth­day). It had been a year since Jobs learned that had a rare type of pan­cre­atic can­cer, for which he had under­gone appar­ently suc­cess­ful surgery. (Six years later, alas, recur­rence of that can­cer would bring about his death). Here is part of what he had to say: “No one wants to die. Even peo­ple who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is Read the Rest…

My wife and I were on the late train from Wash­ing­ton DC to Boston. We had just spent the hol­i­days with her fam­ily, and after a hec­tic three days of brunches, din­ners, wail­ing infants, and dis­rupted sleep, I was not quite in my right mind. I sup­pose the half-bottle of wine on the train didn’t enhance my neu­ronal func­tion­ing, either.  For that mat­ter, I had not really been myself for a cou­ple of days—leaving my lap­top at my brother-in-law’s house, mis­plac­ing my keys, and gen­er­ally walk­ing around in a brain-marinated haze. Sud­denly, just as I was drift­ing off to sleep, I heard the con­duc­tor call­ing my name over the inter­com. “Will Mr. Ronald Pies please speak with the con­duc­tor. It’s impor­tant.” I couldn’t imag­ine what had pro­voked this summons—had I bro­ken some obscure Amtrak reg­u­la­tion? Was my ticket found to be invalid? Was I about to be put off the train for God knows what rea­son? As I approached the con­duc­tor, I could see him smil­ing with a slightly ironic expres­sion, as if to say, “Are we hav­ing some cog­ni­tive prob­lems tonight, sir?” He handed me my black leather “fanny pack” that con­tained not only my wallet—which meant, of course, Read the Rest…

In one of my grade school class­rooms we had a plant that shriv­eled when touched by one of us. That is a pic­ture for what the touch of fear does to life. We react to the fear by with­draw­ing into our­selves and then still attempt to thrive in our wrinkly state. No one I know wants to be touched by death or its cronies called rejec­tion, fail­ure, self-loathing, or dis-ease. The prob­lem is that when we shrivel into our­selves these expe­ri­ences  always seem just out­side the door, and we do not have enough vital­ity to do any­thing but hold the door closed. I sug­gest, instead of try­ing to keep “bad” things out, you focus on mak­ing your inner and outer envi­ron­ment a green­house — or a hot house for cac­tus if that’s you’re pref­er­ence. If you are focused on liv­ing a full life (main­tain­ing your per­sonal green­house) it will be so much eas­ier to share and be open, rather than “hold on to” for sur­vival. Even in our world of light­en­ing fast change and dis­rup­tion, it is pos­si­ble to put your atten­tion on life and on find­ing ways to let your self thrive. A cared-for life is not about becom­ing Read the Rest…

Not every­one likes to gar­den yet this a good era for a lot of us to have the atti­tude of a gar­dener — what I call: spa­di­tude. If you want to get back to what­ever your ver­sion of “the gar­den” is, it only makes sense to do your share of plant­ing, weed­ing, and water­ing. If you have spa­di­tude: You have a green atti­tude, one that respects all life and knows what a car­bon trail is. You forgo enough drama in life to make a crawl space for tran­quil­ity. You cel­e­brate diver­sity while offer­ing the world your unique abil­ity to jug­gle 10 salt and pep­per shak­ers with­out spilling a grain. You know when you are wrong and (gulp) admit it. You prac­tice for­give­ness or pon­der that pos­si­bil­ity. You enter­tain or accept the idea that we’re con­nected — one for all, all for one. What else is in the word spa­di­tude? How would you fin­ish the sen­tence, If You Have Spa­di­tude: YOU_______________________________ .

May this New Year bring you abun­dant bless­ings – good health and much hap­pi­ness! For last year’s words belong to last year’s lan­guage And next year’s words await another voice.                    (T. S. Eliot , from “Lit­tle Gidding”)