I must have been 13 years old. At home just outside Brussels, Belgium, my family — parents, brother, sister and I — were eating supper in the kitchen. The radio was on, tuned to the BBC as always. A program about Nelson Mandela — at the time still incarcerated on Robbe...

Part 3: Bending Towards Wholeness

Beep-beep-beep! Beep-beep-beep! The sound of the kitchen smoke alarm pierces through the house. I sit bolt upright in my bed. It’s 12.15 am. The lights are on in the hallway. I hear mumbling, “It’s bad, it’s really bad.” I venture into...

Part 2: Making Conscious Choices  

I love to wake before dawn. With a cup of warm tea in my hand, I sit and watch the night turn into day. I relish these quiet moments before my family rises, when the world outside is still silent. My phone too is silent and out of reac...

Part 1: Finding Clarity  

The C word.

Yes, the coronavirus.

These are truly unprecedented circumstances. In so many ways, the disruption caused by the coronavirus is a microcosm of our times: uncertainty, a leadership void, a lack of a clear path ahead, loss of control an...

Northeast Ohio: one of the regions in the U.S. most hard hit by the opioid epidemic. I spent last week in Ashtabula County and Cleveland to look beyond the statistics of the opioid epidemic and to listen and learn from the people and communities that are affected.

...

I love the winter solstice, the shortest and darkest day of the year. It marks the changing of the season, the lengthening of the days, and the promise of spring just the other side of winter. 

For me, the solstice creates a space; a space between the busyness of the...

2016 has been quite a year. Both on the national and global political stage, I am concerned about the dynamics that are unfolding. The Brexit vote this summer was troubling to me, having grown up in the heart of an increasingly united Europe. I continue to be convinced...

Perhaps more so than any other trip I can recall in my life, I stepped off the plane with no sense of what to expect. Cuba, an island country just 90 miles off the coast of Florida, has been isolated from much of the world for decades. What exactly does that kind of is...

For as long as I can remember, I have known there are things I am and things I am not. For example, I have always thought of myself as a musician. I play instruments, have played in ensembles and orchestras, have taught the piano, I love to sing, both in choirs and sol...

I have always turned up my nose at school uniforms.  Perhaps because I never had to wear one myself, I have always considered them, well, so uniform.

Until last week.

I was in India with Leaders' Quest, spending the day with Bonnie Singh (Kanwar Raghuvendra Singh Du...