It’s wedding season here in Texas. The temperatures have returned to the land of sanity, the color palettes have gone beautifully autumnal, and we, as professional wedding officiants, are spending our days marrying our beautiful couples…
I have long cycled. I have a beautiful, vintage blue Bianchi road bike that I’ve ridden for years. Never one to ride alone, my cycling partner (and the person who first got me into cycling) was my former business partner and mentor, Sam….
Everything is hard. That is my mantra these days. I acknowledge that, perhaps, it is not the best mantra. But I am not known among family and friends for being the perpetual ray of sunshine. Instead, I am known for my commitment to speaking the…
One of my favorite books in the Christian Bible is Ecclesiastes (Hebrew: Qoheleth). Most people are familiar with the lines “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die . . .” Hey,…
Even before the pandemic, loneliness and isolation were huge issues in our country. The digital divide is more than just an economic issue. These phones and computers that seemingly connect us, also separate us. In April of 2020, as the global…
As a systems-oriented marriage and family therapist, my short answer would be: because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Creating something greater than ourselves is an intrinsically human goal. From the first cave dweller who…
“Why Marriage?” This was a particularly deep question, after my first marriage ended in divorce after 14 years. The new love of my life was, well, still new to me, so a very reasonable question to ask myself was, is this just a rebound? Will this…
Last week I publicly posed a question that I often privately ask my clients in the context of writing their marriage ceremonies. Why are you marrying? And much like the answers we’ve received from clients over the years, the responses to our…
Well, if you live in Texas, Valentine’s Day seems like it was about twenty-three years ago. We’d always intended to write a blog titled “Beyond Valentine’s Day” after February 14th’s love fest. But we never thought it would look quite like…
With a global pandemic still raging, the role of “the gathered” at weddings has been altered. Our weddings in 2020 have been much smaller, incorporated Zoom, or simply been postponed. And almost always for the sake of community. Sure, elopements…