Start Here: Why I Write and Who I Write For

For the Soul-Weary, the Searchers, and Those Unwilling to be Numbed to Sleep

I’ve lived a lot of lives.

When people ask where I’m from, I pause.
Because the answer isn’t just geography.
It’s motion. Memory. Becoming.

I was born in San Francisco in the 1960s, when incense and unrest floated in the same air. The Human Be-In. The Summer of Love. These weren’t history-book headlines. They were the wallpaper of my childhood.

And then I moved—a lot. San Juan. London. Phoenix. Each city carved something into me.
Each departure stretched the thread of home a little thinner.

Eventually, I stopped searching for rootedness in place—and started seeking it in meaning.

That search took me through decades of military service.
Through horror, where I helped recover the dead after the Marine Barracks Bombing.
Through Europe, where I learned to break bread with strangers and call it peace.
Through 9/11, where I helped identify hijackers—and witnessed the full spectrum of human horror and quiet heroism.

It took me into federal service, into intelligence rooms and trauma reports, into classrooms and border stations, into thousands of stories that never made headlines but defined the soul of this country.

And it took me into philosophy.
Into Marcus Aurelius and Kierkegaard.
Into Epictetus and Nietzsche.
Into the long dark of the soul, where sometimes the only answer is to feel the question more deeply.

Those voices became my companions. Not as dogma, but as tools for survival.
They helped me endure. They helped me grow.
They helped me keep my soul in a world that profits from its erosion.

Today, I write.
Not as an academic. Not as a pundit.
But as a secular humanist. A faith-friend.
A man who’s lived. And burned. And stayed.

My writing is for those who are tired of performance and hungry for truth.
For those trying to make sense of suffering without erasing their joy.
For those who want a deeper kind of courage—the kind that begins in stillness, not shouting.

I don’t offer formulas. I offer presence.
I don’t believe in perfect answers. But I do believe in showing up—fully, fiercely, humanly.

I follow in the spirit of voices like John O’Donohue, Rainn Wilson, Adrienne Maree Brown, and Diego Perez.
Not because we share doctrine, but because we share devotion:
to meaning, to mercy, to the sacred task of staying awake in a world that keeps trying to sedate us.

So if you’re wandering—come walk with me.
If you’re aching—come sit with me.
If you’re still asking how to be whole—you’re not alone.

This space is for you.
For anyone who’s ever been cracked by life, and chose to grow anyway.
For those who still believe—quietly, stubbornly—that the soul matters.

This is the work now:
To live with attention.
To resist cynicism.
To keep the soul intact.
And to carry each other home.