Maintaining a positive, supportive relationship with one’s partner in the face of expected and unusual life stress is one of the biggest challenges many couples face. Not uncommonly, instead of pulling together to face life’s difficulties, partners become disengaged or even hostile. The person you expect to always have your back begins to feel like […]
I went on a day long retreat last week to Quiet Place, a large and comfortable cabin with a wrap around porch near Lancaster, KY. It is a beautiful and secluded place that is used exclusively for spiritual retreats. I went alone for a time of silence and solitude and even though it was only […]
What follows is an attempt to write what might happen if a couple were court ordered for an attempt at reconciliation. A friend of mine asked me to do this. It is a little long for a blog but you might enjoy the story: A couple, the Stirlings, are sitting in front of me for […]
I am repeatedly amazed by the power of adult human attachment. There is something spiritual and divine about it, the way that two human beings have this drive to be intimate, vulnerable, and dependent upon each other. We can lose sight of this in the grind of everyday life taking each other for granted. But […]
For the past several months I have immersed myself in the writing and teachings of a Franciscan friar named Richard Rohr. I have been “captured” by the idea or practice of contemplation. I highlight captured because that is what it feels like. I am compelled to explore contemplation and I have been fascinated by Richard […]
Thoughts for meditation from Richard Rohr "Once you know you are sharing in the force field of resurrection, you can always draw on it, live within it, and move out from it."2 Living within the "force field of resurrection" comes from the necessary suffering, or bearing witness to another's suffering, of the life and death […]
What is your first thought if someone were to tell you that the best thing that can happen to you is to fail? Our western culture, especially in the United States, is obsessed with winning, being right, or having the correct answer We have seen something of a movement to counteract this driven obsession to […]
There is an oft used phrase in EFT, an attachment based approach to healing marital distress, “catching bullets”. I use this phrase in my counseling sessions with couples to help them (and ourselves) work on not being reactive to their partners negative comments. This helps couples learn to stay out of, stop or slow down […]
We are in a broken world, we are broken ourselves, and yet we are in a redeemed world, and we are healed, made whole by love. We exist in the middle of this tension and we tend to want to go one way or the other, to have things clarified and settled, even if its […]
"God does not lead the soul by shaming it, just as a good parent would not shame his or her child. It doesn't work anyway. We have all done it at times, and if we were raised in a punitive way our selves, we still tend to think that is the way to motivate people--by […]
