Reflections in the Well

A friend was recently pondering a question she couldn’t answer. What is the question for which my life is the answer? She turned it over for days. Most people would. It has the shape of a riddle but the weight of something more serious—the kind of question that, once heard, refuses to leave. She brought […]

Everyone has been taught how to pray. Very few have been told what prayer is actually for. The gap between those two things is where most people live—reciting words they were given as children, wondering why the words feel hollow, suspecting in private that no one is listening. Some abandon the practice entirely. Others double down on the

There is a gap that runs through most spiritual lives—between the practices we maintain and the transformation serious practitioners seek. The forms are kept. The calendar is followed. The observances are honored. And yet something essential remains unchanged, untouched by all the outward faithfulness. It is only in bridging this gap that the true transformation

The world has been stripped, silent, cold for months. The light is thin; the fields are empty—a bone-deep exhaustion settled over everything. This is the long dark—winter not just as season of nature, but cosmologically. And yet, nature has begun to stir. Much of the snow has started to retreat. Queen Persephone prepares to return

Kalani me-roshi, kalani mi-zero’i. My head is heavy. My arms are heavy. This is G-d speaking. Not metaphor. Not poetic language about divine transcendence observing human suffering from a distance. The Talmud records this in Tractate Sanhedrin: when a person suffers, the Shekhinah says, “My head is heavy, my arms are heavy.” The Divine Presence

As a writer, it is always essential to maintain form and substance. I work very hard to ensure my work is error free, meets the standards of the Chicago Style Manual, and offers proper, accurate citations where applicable. Artificial Intelligence has become the modern writer’s most versatile tool—part copy editor, part research assistant. It assists

Before it was given as a commandment, it was an interruption—an interruption in the day-by-day toil of life. What exactly is this thing we call Shabbat—the Sabbath? Where does it come from, and what was it meant to be? Modern society has rebranded the Sabbath as a “day off,” preserving the language of rest while

A friend recently forwarded me a video discussing the work of Simone Weil. In this particular piece, she detailed a kind of extreme, spiritual exhaustion. An exhaustion that goes beyond simple physical exhaustion; more than being tired from the day’s trials, demands of home, office, and other obligations. An all-encompassing exhaustion where every borrowed meaning

A Line We All Know “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put childish things away.” (1 Corinthians 13:11) Sometimes, a verse from an ancient text transcends itself to become a common expression, essentially assimilated

Every durable belief system, religious or secular, must answer one particularly uncomfortable question: What do we do about what’s broken? This may be broken people, actions, even worlds. We have many words to describe this state of brokenness — sin, karma, trauma, oppression, ignorance — while the label changes, the problem does not. Some systems