Love Essays and Poems

I’m a devotee of Love in all her manifestations. She manifests in me as a father, musician, writer, entrepreneur, psychologist, activist, & mystic.

So, these are short essays and poems about Love.

Beyond the Cartoons

March 15, 2018 Tom Ronen Goddard, PhD, CCEP

I’m struck this morning by the tendency of human beings to use our taxonomies to turn each other into simplistic, distorted cartoon characters. We take our categories -- which humans understandably use to help make sense of a complicated world -- way too far. Man, woman, old, young, boomer, millennial, black, white, brown, yellow, American, Asian, Latino. These labels become a substitute for an actual encounter with an infinitely complex, nuanced human being.

There’s no such thing as “I really don’t have a practice”

March 3, 2018 Tom Ronen Goddard, PhD, CCEP

Often, when conversation turns to practice, I hear the following: “I really don’t have a practice.”

I no longer believe this to be true. I believe that, in fact, for each of us and all of us, our lived life is our practice. However I spend my time today is my practice today. Of course, if I get up, do yoga, sit in meditation, chant, pray, read a spiritual text, and the like, nobody would argue that I have a practice.