Trust is an interesting concept -- and far more exciting as an action. Trusting yourself involves the willingness and confidence to rely on your own integrity, abilities, and character to meet the challenges of a particular experience, or all of life for that matter. For me, trust is not only...

More and more couples today say they want a spiritual but not religious wedding ceremony. This mirrors the trend of Americans who self-identify with this label. The spiritual but not religious now account for approximately 37 percent of Americans and that number has doubled in the last decade.

When I was ordained as an interfaith minister in 1985, I was charged with the responsibility of ministering to all regardless of race, creed, color, situation, circumstance, or environment -- in other words, to serve without prejudice. Isn't this what we should really be asking of our "public servants" --...

I was recently on a panel discussion on HuffPost Live about the reality of death and how it can test our faith. It was in response to a post by Alice Markham-Cantor, a teenager, who eloquently expressed her mental and emotional reaction to death and her

As a life coach, I often find myself working on the same bottom line with clients -- are you letting your heart sing? This is a powerfully loaded question that deserves some unpacking here.

First, let's look at what it means to let your heart sing. Think of a time...

Steve Jobs' last words, spoken with great delight, were, "Oh wow! Oh wow! Oh wow!" What was he seeing? Perhaps what those returning from near-death experiences consistently report -- a sense of moving through a dark tunnel beckoned by a compelling bright light, feelings of peace and well-being,...

It's very easy to fall into a "poor me, nobody loves me, I'm going to go eat worms" state of mind when you don't have any invitations for the holidays. Alternatively, you could choose to enjoy your holidays anyway. It's all in how you see it and who you hold...

Are you caught in a web of stinking thinking, or are your beliefs the bedrock of your success and happiness? If you want to know why you are happy or not, take a good look at your most fundamental beliefs about yourself. Do you believe that you are the kind...

It is true that there are stages to grief, though no two people grieve in exactly the same way. However, something has been missing in our understanding of grief that offers an opportunity for many of us to lessen our pain and suffering when faced with a major loss. That...

For many of us who struggle with excess body weight, "success" in losing weight is soon followed by regaining those pounds and then some. Just now, at the age of 64, I am recognizing why this has been happening to me and perhaps to many others. I have long suspected...

When the promises of a bride and groom are made in the bubble of romantic love, yet untested by life, there is naiveté and ignorance about what life can bring. As a minister who marries many couples, I have come to accept that life will have its way with each...

The beautiful thing about the sequence of the Laws of Spirit is that it so clearly delineates what needs to happen in our hearts and minds to be open to the flow of God's wisdom, love, grace, and blessings in our lives. Ultimately, it leads us to the fifth Law...

"God is love. This means that even the greatest source of negativity is love.

Ultimately, you must come face-to-face with that and recognize that whatever negativity presents itself is still of the true nature of God, which is love."

-- John Morton

As the previous articles in this Laws...

Anytime you allow anything or anyone outside yourself to cause you to choose hurt and to be disturbed inside yourself, then you are being shown how you can strengthen your understanding of the first and second laws of Spirit, to accept and cooperate, no matter what, no matter who....

Cooperation, the second law of spirit, is the proverbial wisdom of making lemonade when you have lemons. You might have been in the mood for ginger ale, but what you have is lemons. So either you go to where the ginger ale is and fulfill that desire, or you stay...

Just as there are laws of the physical universe such as Newton's laws of gravitation and motion, there are five sequential rules that govern spiritual consciousness. They are acceptance, cooperation, understanding, loving, and enthusiasm. Each one is a doorway to the next. Our awareness of the presence of spirit in...

I always thought that babies should come with operating instructions and that parents-to-be should be required to pass a parenting test. After all, a license is required to drive a car. Surely a course in the basics of taking care of a baby's physical and emotional needs would help. Beyond...

Do you feel like you are 5 years old again when you visit with your family? Do you feel like everything is the same somehow? Have you maintained the same role in relationship to your family throughout your life? The shining star? The black sheep? The outcast? The one who...

Existential maturity (is) a kind of peaceful acceptance of mortality and of the relationship between generations of life that mitigates the pain of our transience by allowing an understanding of how we can die without entirely ceasing to exist. -- Linda Emmanuel

I must admit that I have fallen in...

Sometimes, I walk through this world and just marvel at the fact that we are all souls with individualized karmic agendas. Our lives and stories are woven together in a perfect complexity of clearing our individual and collective karmic accruals. It is as though we have a kind of karmic...