My first funeral

I conducted my first funeral this week. Conducted? Officiated? Celebrated? None of those verbs quite fit what it felt like, which was more in the realm of Journeyed, or Travelled With. It was almost the end of the working day when the phone rang. I contemplated not...

Still showing up – surely that counts

“Honour thy father and thy mother” For my interfaith homework, I am reflecting on a chapter of the book, The Ten Challenges: Spiritual Lessons from the Ten Commandments, by Leonard Felder. So far I have got a lot out of reading this book. It has helped me...

My Crib Notes on Confucianism

The goal of the Confucian project is to become fully human. Kung Fu-tzu (Confucius) understood the self as a “node” rather than an entity, a “meeting place where lives converge.” (Smith, 1991). This resonates with my theories of the gift circle. In my PhD dissertation...