numinous 1: supernatural, mysterious 2: filled with a sense of the presence of divinity: holy 3: appealing to the higher emotions or to the aesthetic sense: spiritual -- Mirriam-Webster Today I called my oldest friend to wish her a happy birthday. As we went through the “how did we get to be so old?” conversation that increasingly dominates birthday phone calls, my thoughts kept gravitating back toward her birthday evening 49 ago, when being sixty-something was nearly a lifet

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” – Civil rights leader Howard Thurman I came upon that quote this morning, and it struck me deeply. It made me wonder how often we have it backward when we seek to make a meaningful contribution to the world. I was especially primed to ask that question, because just a few days earlier I had read an article called “The Chef W