a blog by John P. Schuster
The Holiday breather is upon us. Not a breather entirely of course, as we will run around a lot trying to make it all happen again. Still, this time of year we often notice the difference in the air and in ourselves. We slow down and look back at our year, and we give thanks and wonder and assess how we really did through it all. One author I like, Kathy Dowling Singh, writes about[…]
Read moreIn modern times, by definition, we emphasize progress and the future. The mindfulness movement is of course about the one eternal now. What, then, can the indigenous peoples of the world teach us with their emphasis on “the ancestors?” A whole lot and way more than we know. Here is my attempt to learn from my Irish ancestors as I head for Ireland and Iona this month on a soul retrieval trip, the one I[…]
Read moreForrest Gump was a lot of peoples’ hero. His life exemplified a kind of flow as he did not sweat the small stuff and kept his “destiny” in mind, the one his momma told him to stay after. He wondered if that feather that kept showing up in his life (you may remember the visual) was him, floating around purposelessly, or did he have a destiny underneath his disjointed life episodes. Eventually, he reconciled the[…]
Read moreI am in this boomer group in which, like 8,000 of us a day in the US are turning 65 for the next 17 years…wow…elderhood, here we come! A whole lot of us! I am just finishing my main work for my masters in psychology degree, looking at a future with some time to design with new ways of being, and I wonder what parts of me will be making the decisions. A teacher you[…]
Read moreMany types of coaching, mentoring, and counseling would benefit greatly from the lessons of Paul McCartney and Jack Panksepp, the neuro-affective scientist whose ground-breaking work has broad application. Take a quick look. Image above Some rights reserved by alles-schlumpf
Read moreI went snowboarding for about the 18th time in 14 years a few weeks ago. When 50, on a bit of a lark, I learned how to snow board. I was already too old to do this. The young boarders call any boarder over 50 “a gray on a tray.” That was me. I so loved it. The joy of swooshing down the huge, miles-long slopes in Utah or Colorado. The bracing air, the snow[…]
Read moreA good friend of mine, Joy Leach, tells the story of a childhood memory that has shaped her life as a working mom and wife. Her Dad, every week, would pull out seven one-dollar bills and give them to her mom, and this was her allowance for the week. They were not in poverty, though in the ’50s wealth levels were nowhere near today’s. For Joy, traveling and doing her work as a happily married[…]
Read moreThe holidays are upon us and many people will physically go to a place we think of as home, or home-like, with family, friends, sibs, parents, cousins. Even with the unresolved issues that get stirred up by arriving in family settings, in the main we keep longing for home. The metaphor of coming home resonates spiritually as well. We yearn to come home to the original version of us, the more innocent version who had[…]
Read more