Category: Service

School for the gifted…

February 22nd, 2026

I’m going to ask you two questions right off the bat:

“What are your gifts?”

and

“How are you using them?”

Y’know, it’s pretty obvious that there are forces in the world right now that are doing everything they can to keep us divided – to keep us at each other’s throats – so that they can grab all the power and control that they can. If you look at them closely, you’ll see that their actions come from a place of fear; come from a very, very deep wound. And the results of that wound have been pretty fucking horrific in a lot of cases.

But here’s the thing: in the midst of all of that, it’s also obvious – if you look – that a lot of us are starting to pull together, and come into the world from a place of compassion; a place of inclusivity and love.

Doctors. Artists. Musicians. Social activists. Politicians. So many of us are taking the gifts that we’ve been given, and carrying them into the world to serve the greater good…
Don’t just do something…

January 31st, 2026

“Are you as human as the rest of us?”

“Are you doing everything you can to keep your heart open in a world that seems to be going out of its way to shut it down?”

I’ve been praying really hard for clarity lately. I’ve been praying really hard for guidance. And in that, I’m probably not too different from a lot of us.

A good many of us feel this urge to do…something.

But not all of us are going to be called to protest. Not all of us are going to be asked to bleed to death in our cars or in the snow. Not many of us are going to be asked to write anthems; to energize millions of people.

For a lot of us, that calling is something simpler, but just as difficult. We’re going to be asked to go deep inside ourselves. To find our wounds, and to heal them…
Fix, save, and rescue…

January 19th, 2026

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately and talking a lot with others about the idea of being of service. Specifically, how do we assist those who come to us looking for advice or help of some kind, especially within the context of their own emotional recovery or spiritual healing? Where do we draw the line on our own involvement? When does “help” turn into “enabling”? When does our desire to assist turn into our own need to fix, save, or rescue the person that’s come to us?

If you’d like to see more, please check out my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Still a hammer…

January 16th, 2026

I was talking with my teacher and his wife a while back, and I said, “Y’know, I feel like a hammer that gets hung up on the wall of the garage. If there’s a nail that needs to get banged down, I get taken off the wall, the nail gets banged down, and then I get put back up on the wall and just hang out and wait.”

My teacher’s wife started laughing, and she said, “Yeah, but a hammer is still a hammer even when it’s hanging on the wall.”

And man, that really, put the hook in me.

These gifts that we have, whatever they might be, they require us to live in a certain way. Those of us who grew up in dysfunctional households, who had to learn the skill of empathy – had to learn how to read the room so that we could anticipate what was going to happen next, we know a lot about how hard it is to live in the type of world that we live in today. This is not a place that takes kindly to those who feel. And sometimes we need to disappear for a little while, lay aside the things that get in the way, and just rest…

If you’d like to see more, please check out my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:
Checking in…

January 2nd, 2026

Grandfather Joseph Rael teaches us that ceremony begins as soon as you say “Yes” to it. And I really become aware of that about a week or so before our gatherings occur, which they do on the first Saturday of every month. I start to slow down. I start to pay attention to what’s going on inside me, what’s going on in my environment. I start to take a little more notice of what I eat, what I drink, how I move through my day.

And then, as time draws closer, especially on this last day, it really begins to wind up. And the simple chores that we have to do, like putting an extra leaf in the table or taking out the plates and the silverware, getting the crockpot ready for the potluck after the ceremony, raking out the firepit, making sure that we have enough chairs…all those things that go into it, they tend to become more like prayers…

If you’d like to see more, please check out the latest episode of my podcast, “Putting it on the wind,” on YouTube:

Category: Service

School for the gifted…

Don’t just do something…

Fix, save, and rescue…

Still a hammer…

Checking in…