One of the grace notes in an otherwise grim close to 2012 was the powerful human urge to help others who were suffering. That beautiful impulse came shining through the darkness. We have a need to respond and not be bystanders. Like a gravitational pull, our humanity seems to demand...

I'm looking at a Google map that showed up on my Facebook feed. It is filled with multi-colored virtual thumbtacks on my desktop that says Hurricane Sandy Recovery -- Volunteer Opportunities. The colors represent the type of help needed. Red pin: volunteer opportunities at food banks and evacuation shelters. Yellow...

There was a creak and a shutter -- what walls there were leaned and flapped. My son cried out in his sleep next to me and I pulled him closer against the cold. Somewhere in the distance people were shouting and laughing. A car sped by. And then sirens. Later...

'Geography is destiny,' but it also depends what's in your wallet.

We saw it lying on the ground, a stain against the otherwise immaculate Los Angeles sidewalk. "HOMELESS. Lost job, Lost home, Trying not to lose hope," read the abandoned square of cardboard in neatly written letters. As we get...

Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where others see nothing. --Pissarro

The priest walked past the prostitutes every day. He had no choice. They were stationed along the narrow road across from his seminary in Italy. But it was the older woman who caused him the...

Hope has feathers, that reason is a plank,
that life is a loaded gun that looks right at you with a yellow eye.
--Billy Collins

Disclaimer: There is nothing altruistic in the following words.

My time in Ghana felt like the spiritual equivalent of losing a...

The old man sleeping on the moldering carpet a few feet away called out in the darkness, "I didn't do it. I didn't do it." Some of the other men blanketing the floor grunted in their sleep. "I didn't do it," he called again. I rearranged the plastic bag I...

My grandmother escaped from Russia hiding under a pile of hay in a horse-drawn wagon. At the border, men with pitchforks stabbed into it, attempting to thwart any stowaways. They didn't succeed and she and her family found their way to Minnesota, where her daring story seemed utterly incongruent with...

Before I moved to Seattle I used to work in Las Vegas. I wasn't a dealer at the Bellagio or doing weddings dressed as Elvis. I was working at one of the Conservative synagogues in the suburbs. It wasn't on the strip but it was just as colorful.

A...

"Complete Control Matters." Read the poster at the Chicago airport. The copywriters know their audience because I suspect this belief in complete control is one many of us hold. And it is certainly one we desire. We want to be in complete control. Show no weakness. No fear. And stand...

Several years back the Washington Post conducted an experiment. They wanted to know what would happen if Joshua Bell, one of the world's finest violinists, playing one of the best violins ever crafted, was to perform 10 of the most elegant pieces of music ever written. But dressed as an...