I recently read a lovely teaching about the "disease of being busy" by Professor Omid Safi from Duke University. He wrote that when asked "how are you?" so many of us reply with choruses of "I'm so busy...I'm crazy busy...so much going on..." He shared that there is a Persian and Islamic custom that instead of asking "how are you" one asks "how is your Continue Reading
Siri and I: We’ve Been Friends…(evidently…)
True story: I was talking to my husband Ely the other day about the candidates for the November election. We were sitting at the dining room table, my Iphone next to me. All of a sudden Siri (the Iphone "assistant") just started answering me! She said "I don't understand" and then she repeated the whole run-on sentence that I evidently was in the Continue Reading
The Spirituality of Nurturing
by Rabbi Wendy Spears Over the course of many weeks, I was privileged to be in partnership with my dear friend and colleague Rabbi Jill Zimmerman as we planned and shepherded a one-day retreat for a Mindful Journey Through Shabbat a few weeks ago, over the long weekend celebrating the birth of the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.The retreat was intended Continue Reading
Standing Up and Sitting Down For Our Lives (and for Shabbat)
By Rabbi Cindy Enger Rabbi Cindy Enger participated in our “Mindful Journey Through Shabbat” a few weeks ago. She wrote this upon returning home to Chicago. Her beautiful insights are not only about the total’s day experience and what it takes to “clear the space” to spend a day on retreat, but also about Rabbi Sheila Weinberg’s teaching about a Continue Reading
Take A Snow Day (or even a Snow Moment)
There’s something about really bad weather (like blizzards) that are so freeing. No matter what your plans are, your meetings and appointments, if you can’t get out of the driveway, you have to stay put. You are forced to “stay.” You can’t will yourself forward when the Big Snow says, “I don’t think so.” (I still remember the great 1967 snowstorm of Continue Reading
