One thing I love about Chautauqua Institution — where I spend the summer — is that it’s ecumenical and multi-faith, as you tell from the photo above. Though I’m not Catholic, one of my favorite members of the clergy is Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit priest who founded the Homeboys Industry, which gives jobs and…

“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live as only you can”. -Neil Gaiman The theme at Chautauqua Institution this past week was Play. How does taking the time to be…

David Brooks, an author and columnist for the New York Times, gave an excellent lecture here at Chautauqua last week. What I like about Brooks is that he doesn’t just write about politics but about what it means to be human. And one of the biggest challenges of being human is how to adequately help…

“It´s natural to want someone you love to do what you want, or what you think would be good for them, but you have to let everything happen to them. You can’t interfere with people you love any more than you’re supposed to interfere with people you don’t even know. And that’s hard, …, because…

“When you read about the lives of other people, people of different circumstances or similar circumstances, you are part of their lives for that moment. You inhabit their lives, and you feel what they’re feeling, and that is compassion. If we see that reading does allow us that, we see how absolutely essential reading is.”…

Dads are most ordinary men turned by love into heroes, adventurers, story-tellers, and singer of songs.

My husband and I are out of our comfort zone right now, traveling to our summer cottage. Chautauqua Institution, where we spend our summers, is a place known for being “at the end of your comfort zone.” As always we’ll hear controversial speakers, talk about difficult issues, listen to concerts we may or may not…

It’s that time of year again. How many of you are participating in or witnessing a graduation this month? There are so many graduations these days, from pre-school to post-graduate. But I find many of the university commencement speeches to be especially inspiring. Here are some of my favorite quotes from this year’s speeches: “College,…

Did you see the wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle? Beautiful, wasn’t it? And different from the usual royal weddings. As a minister’s wife, I liked the passionate sermon by Bishop Michael Curry. His quote from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was especially inspiring: ‘We must discover the power of love, the redemptive power…

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mothers out there. (And to anyone who has ever helped raise or nurture a child not their own, as well.) Today’s gift to all of us is this moving poem “To The Moms Out There Who Love Someone On the Autism Spectrum,” by Kerry Magro, an autistic man who…