It is in saying "amen" to the highs and lows of life that we are able to live fully in both worldly sorrow and joy, touching what Johannes de Silentio called "the sublime in the pedestrian."

My father had never apologized to me. I am certain that my grandfather had never apologized to my father. Was there some wise tradition of not apologizing that I was supposed to know?

This is a story about serendipity and fortuitousness, luck and good fortune, beauty and love, and is restorative of an optimism that is too often dismissed in contemporary society.

I have to let the loudness of God take me away to wherever I need to be. I'll still go to seven different churches and read through the piles of religious of books I've hoarded in my room, but they can't tell me anything compared to what God can tell me.

We watch the stories of hoarders on television and feel sorry for them and we feel proud to not be one of them. But perhaps we have more in common than we realize.

In our increasingly scientific and pluralistic world, fundamentalist theology unravels at almost every seam.

According to Jewish tradition, the upcoming festival of Shavuot is the anniversary of the giving of the Torah and the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai. Oddly though, we find no clear link in the Bible between the Shavuot festival and the giving of the Torah.

I started my journey in my 20s in Jerusalem. I didn't know anything about spirituality. I wanted to have answers. I wanted to "do it right." So I learned for a full 10 years. Along the way, I acquired a lot of knowledge. But I was so busy fitting in that I didn't notice that I had departed from myself.

You would think people would get excited about mass prophecy, but alas, there's no denying: Passover, the holiday of the Exodus, is way more popular than Shavuos, when we received the Torah. Why is it that we are more attracted to drama than to enlightenment? The solution is cheesecake.

Quite often we find new meaning and strength where we least expect it. Quite often it lies waiting for us to discover. We simply have to look within ourselves.

Instead, I had a knock down, screaming match with "Whoever the hell is up there!" I laid out my case, my fears, my doubts and I demanded an answer!