Beware of Dogs
Two neighborhood dogs turn an ordinary evening walk into an unexpected welcome, offering a lonesome soul laughter, companionship, and a little grace.
A Grave Matter
A Catholic reflects on his parents’ lifelong civil marriage, a cousin’s museum wedding, and why character, sacrifice, and example matter to marriage.
Sacred Greens
A former boy caddy wonders why grown men pursue a little white ball—and discovers in golf a religion of silence, ritual, confession, and jubilation.
Mama:The Iceman’s Here
A reflection on a century of technological progress, from East Boston’s close-knit neighborhoods to today’s digital isolation, asking what we may have lost along the way.
The Prompted U-Turn
After abandoning a crowded medical laboratory, an unexpected inner prompting led me to make a U-turn toward another location. What happened next left me wondering whether adults explain away what children readily recognize. This reflection explores providence, coincidence, and Jesus’ invitation to become like little children.
Much More Than Food
Before I was born, an Italian family table taught me that food was never just nourishment—it was love, gratitude to God, and the first lesson of faith.
Beyond AI: The Real Challenge
An engineer reflects on WPI in the 1960s, the rise of artificial intelligence, and why lived experience—not information alone—remains the true path to wisdom.
Munching on Mars Bars
As a boy, I munched Mars Bars, read Jules Verne, and dreamed of rockets. Decades later, from Sputnik and Apollo to Elon Musk’s Starships, I find myself asking a different question. Mars may be humanity’s next destination, but the most difficult frontier I encountered was never millions of miles away—it was within.
Beneath the Same Cloud
A 1953 schoolboy and a 2026 billionaire build the exact same bomb shelter. One used imagination, the other uses billions—but the radioactive cloud sees no net worth.
Traumatic Grace:
rue transformation rarely arrives gently. A reflection on suffering, metanoia, and the breaking of the ego through traumatic grace.
Shipyard Scars at Sixteen
At sixteen, Richard M. Dell’Orfano worked in an East Boston shipyard where danger, steel, and sweat forged resilience that modern comfort no longer demands of young men.
The Day my Father Arrived
Waiting beneath a dying avocado tree for his father’s arrival, a wandering seeker watches ants rebuild their shattered colony and discovers a quiet revelation about responsibility, providence, and belonging.
My Baby Can’t Breathe
A frantic mother runs from a commune barn with her blue-lipped infant in her arms. A split-second decision turns into a life-or-death intervention—and a vacationing cop that changes everything.
His Money for My Life
A sharply dressed heir seeks investment advice from a man kneeling in the dirt, plucking caterpillars into a jar—revealing a deeper divide between wealth and a life lived with purpose.
Down and Couldn’t Get Up
A rainstorm ride turns violent when a crash leaves him stranded in traffic—until one stranger steps out of the line and changes everything.
The Truth … Crucified
A young man living on the edge of poverty in 1970s San Diego takes a graveyard dishwasher job and witnesses injustice against vulnerable workers. When he speaks out, he loses everything—discovering firsthand what it means to suffer for truth.
The Yellow Death Trap
On a Mexican cliffside road with no guardrail, a packed bus meets an oncoming truck—metal scraping, gravel shifting, and nowhere to go.
One Small Step, One Giant Leap
A lone traveler crosses into rural Mexico and walks into a silent valley where faith, solitude, and stark beauty converge. In a forgotten village and forest of obsidian, he confronts modern distraction, ancient ritual, and a turning point that reshapes his spiritual path.
Now I Am Become Death— the Destroyer of Worlds
A lone two-lane desert road stretches toward a vanishing horizon beneath a threatening sky, as a swirling dust cloud rises and sparse flora—creosote, yucca, and cactus—line the silent, perilous path.
The ‘Colored Only’ Fountain
In 1969, passing through Atlanta on a Greyhound bus, I drank from a fountain marked “Colored Only”—and waited to see what would happen.
Food Can Kill … or Cure
A sudden illness sends a young pilgrim to Boston’s Rising Sun clinic, where he encounters a radical idea: food itself may be the body’s first medicine.
Sorry, No Catholics Allowed
At age twenty-six in the summer of 1968, I visit the Bruderhof community in northern Connecticut, stepping through its stone wall and wrought-iron gate into a pastoral world that feels suspended in time.
When Providence Moves …
In the summer of 1968, a hitchhiking pilgrim experiences Providence in motion, receives unexpected hospitality in Amherst, and witnesses a startling moment at a Connecticut turkey farm.
The Medicine
A young man leaves the ordered stillness of an abbey and steps onto a dusty road, choosing solitude and faith over security in this memoir excerpt from Path Perilous: My Search for God and the Miraculous.
Terror in the Night
A night of shelter at a remote monastery descends into terror when a fellow traveler appears at the foot of the bed with a knife. What follows is a silent vigil of fear, prayer, and survival beneath the Abbey’s ancient walls.
OUTSIDE, LOOKING IN
A winter day in 1967 Boston becomes a wordless lesson in faith, hunger, and social blindness, as cold, abundance, and waste collide on Christmas in Beacon Hill.
Living Deliberately—In Quiet Desperation
My soul longed to stand tall, even as it remained shackled to the cowardice of my flesh.
Embracing Poverty—I Found Christ
An excerpt from Path Perilous recounting chosen poverty, quiet companionship with pensioners, and the discovery of Christ in a wounded World War II veteran.
Timeless Little Children
A reflective memoir excerpt exploring Krishnamurti’s Choiceless Awareness, childhood innocence, and the illusion of time through contemplative silence.
Breakthrough
A memoir excerpt recounting a quiet turning point during psychiatric hospitalization, where truth was received without recoil and healing could begin.
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THE TRIQUETRA OF LIFE: Wisdom, Wealth, and Wellness 