What a Body Knows

It is that time of year again when we are greeted by article after article on how to find the right match, our soul mate, the perfect partner, and then, make it work. But these lists miss the most important point: such differences don't matter, or not in the same way, if your partner is a peer. Read More

To dance is more than just a radical act. It is generative. Dancing offers more than just a critical purchase on our mind over body, individual first, word-webbed, sedentary ways of living (as described in my previous post). Dancing is a primary resource for generating alternatives. One who dances knows otherwise. Read More

“There is no complete recovery from a fundamentalist childhood” (82). So writes Margaret Miles in her latest book, Augustine and the Fundamentalist’s Daughter. Miles was the first woman to receive tenure at Harvard Divinity School, the president of Graduate Theological Union, and… a fundamentalist? Read More

I went on a walk this morning to survey the damage wrought to our land by the winds and rains of Hurricane Irene. I was also interested in exploring the impact on my imagination of a book that I recently read by Darryl Caterine called "Haunted Ground: Journeys through Paranormal America." Read More

My friend and former student at Harvard, Sarah Sentilles, just wrote a book about her experience of Breaking up with God. Most of the book is about the relationship that precedes the breakup and how intimate it is. Sentilles tells a story that lets you know how hard the rupture will be. Read More

In January, at age nine months, Ronan was diagnosed with Tay Sachs disease, a progressive, genetic disease with no cure. Over the next couple of years, Ronan will slowly die. How are we to respond to such devastating news? How can we live in a world where such things happen? Read More

The government's recently released report on healthy eating is typical of our culture's responses to the obesity epidemic: it reinforces a way of thinking about a human self that is itself a contributing factor to the problems it purports to address.  Read More

At this time of year, many citizens of the western world celebrate the winter solstice, with its returning light, as the coming of peace. The prince of peace is born.

Tell that to my five year old. He loves to argue. Why?

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On Saturday, a hammer hit me. In the face. Read More

I think of myself as a technomoderate. While I sit at a computer for some time nearly every day, I do so selectively. I email regularly, blog periodically, and update my website from time to time. I surf the New York Times daily, and Facebook weekly. While writing, I invariably call upon google or amazon to help me find a source or research an idea. In all, I use the web in moderation, to get the job done, while living most of my life in the real world—or so I thought. Then we spent two weeks at the end of the summer without an internet connection. Two weeks?  Read More

Sometimes, what our bodily selves know is not obvious. So it was with the case of the flu I contracted two weeks ago. It was a Monday evening. The symptoms began as soon as I pressed “publish” on my last blog entry. My skin felt hot and prickly. It hurt to move. I felt generally strange, askew in myself. I wondered: Does my bodily self know anything? My mind was blank.  Read More

In her thoughtful and lively book, How Fantasy Becomes Reality, social psychologist Karen Dill deftly moves beyond the question of whether or not our use of screen media affects us. That debate, she confirms, is essentially over: it does. The more interesting question she asks is why we are so quick to deny such influence. Why are we so vulnerable to media effects? Read More

Lifelong passion may be about learning to love, yet it is not about learning to love in general, as honorable an activity as that may be. It is about learning to love and be loved by a particular person and doing it well. How do we do it?  Read More

A simple walk, but as I write it down, as I know I must, I find it has all the elements of the experience shift that enables us to find wisdom in our desires for food, sex, and spirit. If we can name such an experience shift, recognize it in ourselves, and cultivate it in our thinking and feeling and acting, then we can develop a powerful resource for participating consciously in becoming the people we are and want to be. Read More