On Sunday, I'll be taking the Bodhisattva Vow with Dr. Reggie Ray.  I've been thinking about this for quite a while; about a year now, and I have talked about it with several people as well.  A friend of mine suggested I write an essay stating exacly why I wanted to do it, so I did.  Here's what I wrote.

I'm a grandfather!! My reflections on this amazing event are here on Elephant Journal.

Yikes.... how is it so much time lapses between visits here?

Well, at any rate, I've been out in the world keeping myself busier than I'd like to be sometimes, and for the most part, it's been good.  On February 14, I adopted The Best Dog In The World.  He's simply amazing.  For the longest time I saw myself as a "cat person."  My kids asked me if this means I'm a dog person now.  I told them I'm a Frankie (the name of the dog) person.

I've also been out there supporting my son who joined the swim team at school. It's kind of cool, especially since I was on the swim team when I was in high school.  I've been super careful to reinforce that he should not compare himself to me and I've been checking in with myself to make sure I'm not placing any sort of expectations on him/re-living my days vicariously, which has been much easier than I thought it would be.

I've also been moving forward with my digital classroom, and in fact, I have a live blogging session coming up with my students.  I'll have to create and event so people can join us!  Less than 40 days left in our old building... we move into a whole new building next year, which is pretty exciting.... woooo!

I've been doing a fair bit of blogging/reviews at Elephant Journal as well.

Yikes!  No wonder I'm not here a lot lately! :-)

Please read and comment on my newest post over at Elephant Journal, especially if you're a Buddhist (or thinking about becoming one).  :-)

My class tomorrow is going to be attempting to answer that question; if you'd like to join us, you can go to the class blog and join us via coveritlive.  The link to it is right here.

Just published an article on Elephant Journal about mindful travel... feel free to read and leave your comments... hope you like it!

Woops... almost forgot... here's the link!  :-)

 Earlier this month, I posted my list of top 20 books over at Elephant Journal.com.  It's actually generated a fair bit of discussion, so I decided to post it here to see what people in the Gaia Community would pick for their top 20... click on the link and give me YOUR suggestions! :-)

As I mentioned in my review of The Compassionate Carnivore, I enjoy a good steak.  Now that’s not to say that every meal I eat has to contain some sort of meat product, and in fact, about a year ago I moved to cut back on the amount of meat my family and I eat to one meat meal a day (with smaller portions of meat) with two or three total vegetarian days each week. Last April, I made the decision to get our beef and chicken exclusively from a small, local farms (i.e., the farmers’ market) instead of King Soopers or Costco (or even Whole Foods), deciding that I was no longer going to opt-in to supporting the factory farm model of meat production.

This is kind of a long article... the rest can be found here.

But then I saw this video on Elephant Journal and had to pass it along.

Over at Elephant Journal, there's an interesting little discussion started around mindfulness and politics.  I've added my two cents... come over and check it out and comment... makes things more fun that way! :-)  The link to it is right here.