Some people might read this column’s headline and think it is self-indulgent and not appropriate for the month of love. However, self-love must be present before we can love others. The greatest impediment to self-love is shame. The late John Bradshaw, counselor and motivational speaker, explains “the feeling of shame has a demonic potential to encompass our whole personality … a person can come to believe that his (or her) whole self is fundamentally flawed and defective.”
In recent years, a number of US states have legalized a new way to process human corpses that some have called “dissolving the dead.” Its technical name is “alkaline hydrolysis,” but it is also known as biocremation, aquamation, green cremation, and resomation.
This morning, I recognized a shift in my journalism career that feels noteworthy. In the past two years, I’ve done more open-ended interviews than ever before.
One challenge of my work as a judge in a diocesan marriage tribunal is that, in one sense, nobody is happy to have to meet me. No matter how a relationship became broken, or whose "fault" it was, or whether a declaration of nullity can ultimately be granted, the experience of a failed marriage is never easy.