I was born in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in Westport and Weston, Connecticut. I received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Keene State College, a Master of Arts degree from Syracuse University, and a Master of Divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary.
Although I completed my college career at one of New York City’s distinguished seminaries, my interest in theology, philosophy, and psychology began before my formal studies there. In my undergraduate years, I’d started reading some of the greats in their field and continued to do so after college. Some of these authors include Paul Tillich, Simone Weil, C. G. Jung, Marion Woodman, Thomas Merton, Ernest Becker, H. Richard Niebuhr, M. Scott Peck, Joseph Campbell, and James Hillman. In the early 1980s I also took myself on several retreats at the Benedictine Mount Saviour Monastery in Pine City, New York.
In the mid-1980s, my path led me to the writings from the East and to those who’d studied and taught from its wisdom traditions, including the American-born Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön, her teacher the late Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, Jack Kornfield, and Thich Nhat Hahn. It was about that time when I started working at the renowned Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York.
In May of 1993, I went on my own (I was married at the time) to Nepal for a month to go on a Buddhist meditation retreat there and hike in the foothills of the Himalayan Mountains. Back in the States, I went on retreats at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts; at Karmê Chöling in Barnet, Vermont; and at Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Temper, New York. I also went on several solitary cabin retreats at Gampo Abbey in Pleasant Bay, Nova Scotia.
I left Omega in 2011, after having worked there for 20 years. During that time I had the pleasure of hosting and getting to know dozens of renowned writers, performers, wisdom keepers, and spiritual guides, each of whom has been my teacher in one way or another, including Thomas Moore, Sylvia Boorstein, Nick Flynn, Robert Thurman, Natalie Goldberg, Robert Peng, Meredith Monk, Panache Desai, and Maia Danziger. Although I am no longer on the staff at Omega, I continue to manage and host Pema’s programs there.
Immediately after I left my job at Omega, I produced and offered online programs with Spirituality & Practice. With the celebrated meditation teacher and author Sylvia Boorstein, I developed two successful online programs. One is titled “Lovingkindness” and the other is titled “The Liberating Power of Mindfulness.” I also worked with renowned Jungian analyst and author, James Hollis, to develop a program called “Creating a Life.” I also offered two online programs on my own, “A Field Guide to Solitude” and “Mastering the Art of Resilience.” To learn more about these programs or to sign up as an on-demand participant, please visit spiritualityandpractice.com.
After that, I became a curriculum developer for a new retreat and conference center that opened in 2017. Called the 1440 Multiversity, it’s located in Scotts Valley, California, just a few miles from Santa Cruz.
I loved working in the field of personal growth and spiritual development, but even after having steeped myself in that world for so many years, I still felt deeply unfulfilled. During all those years, I’d been working on and off on a big novel, never seeming to find enough time and energy to complete it. So, in the spring of 2018, I decided to pull away from every paying gig I could and still remain financially solvent. Then, I dove headlong into the book and finally completed it at the end of 2019. Titled The River Between Us, the book was labor of love and bittersweet agony. I’ve never worked with so much devotion and for so much time on anything else, and I feel really good about what I’ve accomplished.
My opinion essays and personal essays have appeared in a variety of print and online publications, including The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Christian Science Monitor, The Sun magazine, and The Shambhala Sun magazine (now called Lion’s Roar). My interviews with Pema Chödrön, Marion Woodman, and Sister Joan Chittister—all published in The Sun magazine—are part of an ongoing series of talks with prominent people who have most influenced me.
In 2013, I accomplished another formidable task by becoming a certified volunteer EMT with my local fire and rescue squad. Learning how to help in medical emergencies was not the only thing this experience has taught me. I’ve also learned about the amazing workings of the human body and the precariousness of our lives. The scenes of car accidents can be a rude awakening into the sad fact that you or a son or a daughter or a mother or a father or a wife or a husband or a friend–anyone you know and love–can be alive one minute and dead the next.
Another accomplishment I am particularly proud of is my pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago across northern Spain. I walked every step of the entire nearly 500 miles, from St.-John-Pied-de-Port just over the Pyrenees in France to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain. I did it in the fall of 2015. It took me 42 days with only one day of rest. I met several wonderful people from all over the world, some of whom I am still in touch with from time to time.
Since 2011, I’ve spent a lot of time in the south of France (just a few miles from the Spanish border and about a two-hour train ride from Barcelona), returning nearly every year for a month or two to the same neighborhood. It feels like home to that part of me that loves being an expatriate, that feels homesick for the experience of living elsewhere for a time.