Posts – Page 7 – Deepening Our Journey

Deepening
Our Journey

Oct 2018 luncheon pic

Learning from Barry

September 1, 2021

The question came completely out of the blue. I was talking with a friend who has very strong opinions politically, often quite different from my own. He generally tolerates (appreciates might be going a bit too far!) my questions which are usually focused on helping me better understand his positions and how he came to them. One day he turned the tables and asked me, “By the way, how did you originally get interested in trying to seek out and understand folks who are different or think differently than you

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Best Investment Advice

The Best Investment Advice I Ever Got

August 1, 2021

When I was a youngster just starting my own newspaper route, I got some advice from a friend of the family. “You need to open your own savings account and get into the habit of saving,” he told me. “If you pay yourself first and make those deposits on a regular basis, between your savings and the interest you’ll be totally surprised at how quickly it grows!” Then, in what seemed like a throw-away statement, he added, “Actually most aspects of life are like that, especially relationships, whether it’s a

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No Dying for Me!

July 5, 2021

“Wow! I thought we had a lot of cicadas at our house!” said the FedEx deliverywoman as she viewed the “too many to count” carcasses spread over our macadam driveway. “During the summer,” she went on, “I like to sleep with our bedroom windows open but I can’t stand to do that now because of the horrible noise they make.” Her comments reminded me how much my own response to this rather large bug had changed in just a short span of time. Just days before I had encountered a

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Thinking about

My Two “Go-to” Questions

June 7, 2021

How it is that the close 20-year friendship of two next-door neighbors ended over dandelions? That is the question I pondered when I heard about the rift that had developed between two couples who live in a rural development near me. The development is quite attractive; the lots are between one and two acres and all of the homes are uniquely designed, expensive, and well cared for. A small stream runs through the rear of the properties and the lawns are meticulously manicured, by either small outside lawn care companies

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Butterfly

Choosing Transformation

May 10, 2021

For Easter this year, in addition to the obligatory basket of candy, we gave our two grandsons a butterfly farm. It’s an all-inclusive package with five very tiny caterpillars that grow so fast that I swear you can actually see them get bigger if you can sit still for a period of time! Rita and I got to see the transformation ourselves at various points in the process and between visits, the boys kept us updated by texting us pictures. Watching the process of transformation was quite amazing. At about

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caring confrontation

Caring Confrontation

April 1, 2021

One of my favorite things about writing this blog is the dialogue it creates with readers. In the feedback on my latest post on humor, several loyal readers specifically commented on one particular passage, a challenge I “snuck” into the text that they wanted me to say more about. The section in question reads: “[H]umor should never be at a cost to another person. Actually everything done or said that could possibly create pain or alienation is the opposite of humor and I believe we have an obligation to confront

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Life’s Lubricant

March 2, 2021

Rita and I bike a lot with our Quadracycle on the rails to trails in our beautiful section of Pennsylvania. What I learned over the years is a high-quality gear oil, a lubricant, can make the journey a lot easier and so much more enjoyable! If you fail to lubricate the chain and wheel bearings, friction builds up thus making the going much more difficult. Actually if you neglect to apply the gear oil, over time the friction can begin to break down the metal and you’ll eventually find yourself

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The Challenge, the Gift of Diversity

January 30, 2021

This year Rita and I elected to spend our winter at the beach. We decided upon New Smyrna, south of Daytona, because very good friends of ours have been wintering there for several years. One of our friends’ fun hobbies is collecting “sea glass” which they seek out each morning as they walk the beach. Sea glass is ordinary glass that somehow winds up in the ocean. After years of being tumbled around it ends up surfacing on a beach somewhere and folks hunt diligently for these colorful, often highly-polished

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Attitude

January 9, 2021

It’s not what happens to us in life but rather how we respond to what happens to us. If you have read any of my writings over the years, attended my workshops, sat in my office, or spent any significant time in my presence, you may very well have heard me say this at some point or another. I’m not sure when or how I was first introduced to this principle but I do know when it began to take hold and become deeply lodged in my gray matter. Just

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