Tag: fatherhood
Mindfulness for Fathers: Louis CK is Wrong About Boredom
In support of a new book I’m co-writing with Michael Stone about the spirituality of family life. Follow the link to support and pre-order.
I have an ambivalence crush on Louis CK. He plays the brave and humiliating role of exposing the swinging sweaty balls of the cultural id. But this doesn’t make him the spiritual teacher so many want him to be, especially if we forget that he’s playing a caricature.
Continue reading “Mindfulness for Fathers: Louis CK is Wrong About Boredom”
Family Wakes Us Up IGG campaign
Video from the fundraising campaign my book with Michael Stone on the spirituality of fatherhood.
Mindfulness for Fathers: Five Difficult Feelings We Can Learn to Love
In support of a new book I’m co-writing with Michael Stone about the spirituality of family life. Follow the link to support and pre-order.
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It’s a tall order for many men to even acknowledge difficult feelings. But love them? That’s just going too far. But of course, going farther and loving deeper than you knew you could is what fatherhood, and life, demands.
Parenting is painted through with great strokes of perfectly natural sorrow. You can only pretend to fight it. Much better to look at it carefully, to see its colours clearly, feel its textures. What else could be at the root of empathy and compassion? What else would give you the gravitas you’ll need to be a person of consequence in later life? What else would you even aspire to? Our strange luck is that there are at least five inevitable sorrows that soften us as fathers, even as they strengthen us. Their lessons extrapolate well to the rest of life. Continue reading “Mindfulness for Fathers: Five Difficult Feelings We Can Learn to Love”
Excerpt from Family Wakes Us Up: the first post-natal letter
A letter from Family Wakes Us Up, my new book with Michael Stone.
There’s only one week left in our crowdfunding campaign to support its completion and publication.
You can support us by pre-ordering here!
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10/29/12
Dear Michael –
The clock says 4:37, my flesh says stay awake forever – you can’t miss any of this. My eyes are burning with bright exhaustion. He’s nursing and sleeping well, but it feels like I’m going through my own birth, and the labour has taken this whole nine days so far. Whenever I think I’m settling in for complete silence, I hear him breathe like another person within me, someone I have forgotten until now, someone coming in a dream, but no dream has ever pulsed so hot. Continue reading “Excerpt from Family Wakes Us Up: the first post-natal letter”
Mindfulness for Fathers: Giving Your Child Secret Space
A post in support of Family Wakes Us Up, a book I’m co-writing with Michael Stone. Please support the publication by donating here. Thank you!
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Our son Jacob is thirteen months. From dawn till dusk he treads the threshold between the togetherness we share with him and the secret space he is beginning to find in himself. At this age – all ages pass so quickly! – the contrast between the two is most visible in his relationship to books. Continue reading “Mindfulness for Fathers: Giving Your Child Secret Space”
Family Wakes Us Up — by Michael Stone and Matthew Remski (first published excerpt)
The following four letters open a new book I’m co-writing with Michael Stone about the spirituality of family life.
