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St. Ignatius taught a method called the examen to his students that was focused on discernment , or gaining insight into which activities were life giving and which were draining.  Although [...]

As my father approached the end-of-life at the long term care home where he had spent the last few months of his life, I received a telephone call in the early hours of the morning from the head [...]

Potatoes Photo by graibeard We cannot eat raw potatoes, but we don’t throw them away just because they are raw. The following comes from one of my favourite teachers of mindfulness, the Buddhist [...]

Part one – meditation promotes relaxation The counterpart to the fight flight or freeze response, the relaxation response, occurs when the body is no longer in perceived danger, and the autonomic [...]

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how.  The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.  The artist never entirely knows.  We guess. We may be wrong, but we [...]

A recent study* looked at why psychotherapy works – or more specifically, the conditions that promote positive growth and change. One trait stood out among all of the others such as social [...]

“In facing new experience or in facing death, eventually we need to let go of our supports and trust what happens.  We need to free ourselves from relying on any props whatsoever.  That [...]

Shared as part of a memorial service at Niagara-On-The-Lake, June 17, 2023 Today we gather as a community of mourners, each of us drawn here by a common thread as we seek to remember and honor [...]

We often spend much of our time thinking about the future, or the past.  As a result, we miss the experience of being here now, or being present.  Richard Rohr describes the importance of [...]

Grief is a normal, natural response to loss but we often don’t want to know about it.  The reality is that we will all experience major and minor losses in our lifetime.  Not acknowledging [...]