Just this morning I asked a friend to listen to me for a time, uninterrupted. I needed to feel some things that have been rumbling within for weeks. We’ve been friends for about 25 years. We’ve been listening to each other regularly, taking turns as each other’s peer counselor for a decade or more. I…
This week I received a birthday greeting from a family member. Like all of the others from this relative, the rather expensive card was carefully selected — this one specific to a 70-year-old male — and simply signed with their name. There was no preface to the card nor a closing to personalize it. I…
Fifty-five years ago I was in a friary, preparing to join a religious order. During my time there, immediately after the Second Vatican Council, we still maintained many of the old ways of the Order. You could join at age 13, for example. We observed the Hours of prayer (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Sext, Terse, etc.).…
Back in the days when we actually watched television shows at their scheduled times, Friends was the bomb. Its finale in 2004 was viewed by more than 50 million people, making it among the top watched television episodes in history and the top in that decade. We knew people whose social lives before that final episode…
This week I have been writing about love in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. I have written about three facets of love as these apply to interpersonal relationships and civic relationships, namely intimacy, passion, and commitment. The particular model of love that I ascribe to differs from the Greeks, Romans, St. Paul of Tarsus, or Santa.…
Each year I teach about love in a psychology class at the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee. Each semester there are at least a few students who question why I am teaching this content in a course about the psychology of LGBT people. They seem to echo Tina Turner: What’s love got to do with…
Creating Community for Everyone 