True confessions: I had to call Father Toni Amato to get some help understanding the world of Sassafras Lowrey's Roving Pack. It's a world of transgender gutterpunks. The first word I knew. The second, not so much.

I sit on an advisory group committee for Father Toni Amato, a...

I love Aaron Sorkin. He's smart, he's witty, and I align perfectly with his left-leaning political tendencies. That's why I watch The Newsroom, Mr. Sorkin's brilliant new television show on HBO that just finished its first stellar season.

Jeff Daniels plays television news anchor Will McEvoy in the series, and...

Planning a death, believe it or not, is part of planning a life. Who knew?

My sweetie has been interested in the dying process for a long time. It's part of how she wants to spend her retirement -- serving people in that process. When her 92-year-old parents were dying,...

I had to laugh at Brooks Barnes' article in last Sunday's New York Times' Fashion & Style section on gay-wedding fatigue. It went around Boston a few short years ago, "the natural outcome of decades of pent-up demand," as Mr. Barnes states. His article formed a poignant contrast...

Dear Mr. Obama,

I thought, since you've evolved in your thinking about gay marriage (for which I am deeply grateful), you might like to know what DOMA has cost just one family in this beautiful country of ours.

My partner and I have been lawfully wedded since Halloween 2005. We...

It's about time some visionary publisher woke up to those of us who are spiritual and readers here on earth! This Valentine's Day, I'm doing the Happy Dance over the nascent existence of a new imprint at Hay House called Hay House Visions. Their mandate, as I understand it, is...

What a remarkable book Susan Ni Rahilly has written about her odyssey through her past in the Catholic Church (caps intentional). Daddy's Girl's Guilty As Hell -- The Lonely Legacy of Catholic Guilt: A Woman's Soul Imprisoned is newly out on Kindle.

One of the things I've noticed in my...

Red-Robed Priestess is Maeve Rhuad's last adventure. And oh, what an adventure it is! As I'm sure you know, I've been a fan of Maeve Rhuad for a long, long time.

For those of you who don't know, Maeve Rhuad is Elizabeth Cunningham's delightfully irreverent holy whore, the Celtic Mary...

I've been a spiritual counselor for 30 years now, and I'm getting so very tired of the something-must-be-wrong-with-me approach to life and, especially, to coupling. Nothing's wrong with you, dear one. Nothing at all.

In fact, here's a little secret that few know. If you'll stop asking yourself what's wrong...

It's Sunday morning in Boston in the midst of a VERY bad rain storm formerly known as Hurricane Irene. And what a drama she has caused!

The Weather Channel rock stars got their 15 minutes of fame and played [and replayed] countless times the news of Lady Irene, where she...

Damn. Damn it. These doctors are pissing me off -- royally. Who do they think they are?

Granted, I'm in a particularly strange situation at the moment. I just returned from major surgery in a foreign country. I need follow-up from a doctor in the U.S. who didn't do the...

Years ago I remember hearing about a CEO new to an international company who took all the chairs out of all the conference rooms as one of his first acts. It made meetings a lot shorter.

A funny thing happened to me this week on the order of the chairless...

The West has just passed through one of its annual spiritual times: Easter, both Western and Eastern Orthodox, and Passover. In my spiritual counseling practice, I have been falling over what I call "The Shoulds."

We have so many shoulds. And shouldn'ts. Life shouldn't be this. People shouldn't do that....

Why is it that humans are so fascinated with the end of time? Time is one of the ways we organize our world, one of the few that all persons agree upon.

Harold Camping, self-styled evangelist and eschatologist, predicted that the world would end and the rapture would come...

I've had a spiritual counseling practice for nearly 30 years, and over time, it's become clear that I can pretty much gauge what's going on in our civilization by the small slice of life I see in my practice. It is perhaps not scientific, but it works for me. Lately,...

...don't say anything at all. This was one of those mother rules in my upbringing, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Prince William's and Kate Middleton's royal fairy tale wedding is a case in point.

I was appalled at the news coverage:

"Her dress was too simple."

"They...

Are you one of those people who keeps an emotional ledger? If so, I want to assure you that it's taking way too much of your time, energy and soul. Let it go.

Emotional ledger-keepers are those folks who keep the mythology of obligation alive and humming. If so-and-so picks...

Sorry, darlings, but it's getting close to tax time, and you know what that means. For those of us who itemize, all those little pieces of paper need to be ordered and put into Tax Preparation forms generated by accountants all over the country.

I finished with my slips of...

Lately I've been on a kick: I'm reading books set in the 1940s and earlier. They detail the stories of the lives of their times. I've recently noticed, though, that no one ever mentions the environment. It wasn't on their radar.

When did we even start noticing the environment? I...

Life is too damn complicated these days. It's an endless round of information and opportunity. We have to face facts: We're going to miss out on something occasionally, and if we don't, we're going to implode even more dramatically than we already are.

I know people who schedule every waking...