Search results for: A Love Letter From SI

Reb Zalman’s Commitment to Inclusiveness and “Deep Ecumenism” Reb Zalman’s commitment to inclusion for all was born out of personal experience and a knowledge of Jewish history. As a young person in Nazi occupied Europe, he experienced the ultimate exclusion as he and his family sailed in a boat with other Jews looking for a country that would welcome them. Reb Zalman was always a seeker, and while still a young student in the 1940’s, he came to realize that the spiritual issues he was wrestling with were shared by people of other faiths. The [...]

Learning to Love Being Old Have you noticed that a vibrant, joyful, passionate old person is always complimented with being young at heart or looking youthful for their age? Have you ever heard anyone being complimented for being an amazing old person?  It seems like being identified as old cannot be in the same sentence as being fully alive, radiant, and/or exuberant about life. I would like to challenge this point of view. I read James Hillman’s book The Force of Character and the Lasting Life over 10 years ago and it profoundly changed my [...]

SI and I - My Story In 1996, while attending a men’s conference in New Mexico, a workshop leader encouraged me to read a newly published book about growing older, “From Age-ing to Sage-ing.”  As a 55-year-old man contemplating early retirement and wondering about my next steps, I enthusiastically accepted his suggestion and found real wisdom in the book. My wife Charlotte, a Jungian Psychoanalyst in private practice, was also very interested in the second half of life issues that the author wrote about. The next year Charlotte and I traveled to Colorado to attend [...]

SI and I: My Story I began my journey to discover my inner life, that is the search for my soul and my authentic self at age 42 when the grit of the failure of a marriage began to form.   From that point my inner journey took me to new places where I began to explore new ways of being such as certification in Gestalt Therapy at Southern Connecticut State University as well as family systems at The Hellinger Institute and a grounding in psychotherapy with the Center for Intentional Living.  These studies were completed [...]

A Practice in Conscious Aging: Lifelong Learning A Practice of Lifelong Learning:  With enduring curiosity and innovative creativity, we have a personal mission to continue to grow spiritually, cognitively, and emotionally. “We spend precious hours fearing the inevitable. It would be wise to use that time adoring our families, cherishing our friends, and living our lives.”    Maya Angelou The key to living a vibrant life as we move into our third chapter is to find meaning.  There are myriad ways to do so.  Some people famously never retire and simply continue to do what they’ve [...]

Discovered Treasure: Gems of Wisdom by Connie Goldman As Liaison with the Sage-ing International Council of Honored Sages for several years, I had the opportunity to speak regularly with Honored Sage, Connie Goldman. We discovered a common love of gardening, and one of my favorite books that Connie wrote is Tending the Earth, Mending the Spirit: The Healing Gifts of Gardening. Connie weaves the language of gardening throughout her writing…describing growth and change in mid-life and beyond as a kind of blooming, suggesting that the changes and challenges that come into each of our lives as [...]

Journey from Adult to Elder I didn’t even know there was an elder stage in life until my late 50’s. After reading “From Age-ing to Sage-ing” by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, I realized how distorted my view and our society’s are on aging. Prior to reading this book, I just assumed that I would keep doing what I had always done. I understood the Spring and Summer of life very well. We went from our parental home to creating our own home that reflected who we were. We developed our personality, our character, what mattered to us, [...]

Suffering Effectively: Reflections on the Buddha’s First Noble Truth I first heard the phrase effective suffering from meditation teacher Shinzen Young, who used it in a story he told about the renowned Christian contemplative Thomas Merton.[1] Merton lived quite a bohemian life before he converted to Catholicism and then entered one of the church’s strictest and most ascetic monastic orders. When he was asked about his decision and the suffering that such a lifestyle involves, Merton said that he didn’t become a Trappist monk so that he would suffer more than other people but that he [...]