The night before my kids went back to school this year, my eleven-year-old son sliced off the very tip of his left index finger while finishing a back-to-school project. His dad and I took turns holding pressure on it for 3 ½ hours, until the blood finally stopped bubbling to the skinless surface, which was [...]

In honor of the California Supreme Court decision on marriage equality, here's an excerpt from my interview with a Rabbi from the Reconstructionist tradition: “I guess I haven’t really found an issue that I believe I couldn’t change if I found like minded people and worked with them,” says Rabbi Erin Hirsh, who describes herself [...]

Here's another story that didn't make it into the book (due out in paperback in less than a month!): Joan noted that the self-respect her parents taught her affects how she is treated. I observed this dynamic myself once when I went to the hospital with my seventy-year-old mother, who was having a diagnostic procedure. [...]

Attempting to control other people's behavior usually backfires. I love the example of Professor Umbridge in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. When Professor Umbridge (the consummate control freak) forbids students to read a magazine interview with Harry, his wise friend Hermione just smiles: "Don't you see? Umbridge just guaranteed that every student [...]

Here's another story from Sophie's interview that didn't make it into the book. Sophie had been previously described as a petit white woman with blond hair and blue eyes: I recall another story Sophie told me once before she was ill. One night she was walking to her car on a dark city path in [...]

Those of you who have read The Wisdom to Know the Difference may remember Sophie, who thought she was dying of leukemia and then had a remarkable full recovery after coming to complete peace. Well, here's a piece of her interview that never made it into the book, even though I was very touched by [...]

As promised last time, I've been reading the "cuts" file from The Wisdom to Know the Difference, looking for things that feel worth saying, even though they didn't make it into the book. I've noticed that I did a lot of ranting about our culture early on, which got scaled back as I revised. Here's [...]

This morning as I was learning how to use my new iPhone at the Mac store, I got a call from my auto mechanic informing me that it would cost $7,400 to fix the broken monitor in my Prius. This has got me thinking about the pros and cons of possessing such fancy devices.  I [...]

Those who know of Joel Osteen may be surprised to hear that I’m reading his #1 New York Times bestseller Your Best Life Now and trying to figure out what speaks to me and what doesn’t. For those unfamiliar with the famous smile pictured here, Osteen is the pastor of Lakewood Church, said to be [...]

I like observing the wild way my mind works. I’m a fascinating case—as are we all, I suspect. I’m especially interested in intuition, where it comes from, and whether we can trust it. Usually I do trust it, though that doesn't mean that things work out exactly as I expect. What got me thinking about [...]