On the beautiful Garden Island of Kauai last week, we gathered for the wedding of my daughter Tara to her beloved, Philly. There was such loving energy that a week later I am still buzzing with the vibes but unable to find the words to transmit the intensity. Two hundred people, half of them unknown to each other before the event, bonded together in a communal love fest that lasted for five days. It was a multicultural extravaganza that combined elements of a Hippie love-in, Wiccan solstice celebration, Polynesian dance festival, Native American rituals and Jewish tribal melodies, coming together in a paradise that resembled the parking lot of a Grateful Dead concert.

From our diverse clans we created a new tribal family. The wedding ceremony began with the families gathering at the top of a terraced garden that had two separate paths intersecting halfway down where the men and women came together and continued down as pairs. As the last one down, I watched the processional descend and it looked like a double helix DNA strand, and it struck me that we were the building blocks of a new family.

Who were these family members? Jews, Christians, Wiccans, pantheists, atheists, socialists, anarchists, and environmental activists woven together by common vision and intention. After I gave Tara to Philly, we all followed them into a huge tent, at the top of which hung my prayer shawl.

Elaine stood to speak for Mother Earth but was unable to articulate a single word. As she struggled to move her lips, only tears emerged. We sat silently in community, and understood the unspoken love that all mothers feel for their children. There was a Hopi wedding vase ritual and a Polynesian tapa cloth wrapping ceremony. Then we all stood with one arm around the person next to us and the other outstretched toward Tara and Philly, and we sent our energy. A spontaneous hum arose to fill the tent with such love that I wept when, with arms outstretched, I recited the Hebrew benediction, “May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the light of the Lord’s presence shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord bestow favor upon you and give you peace.”

We followed the couple out and were guided by belly-dancers to the reception site. Here, we were greeted by fire-dancers, and the bride performed a hula for her husband that was unbelievable. The toasts followed, one more poignant and/or hysterical than the next.


We laughed, danced, sang and celebrated into the wee hours, living testimony that strangers from separate tribes can come together as family, woven tightly by the thread line of love.

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Charles Barkley was just inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame; he will go down as one of the most beloved players in history (certainly in Phoenix). I love Charles Barkley — and I rarely say that about celebrities because I find them vain, superficial and erratic. Charles certainly has a talent for self- promotion, but he does it with a brutal honesty, and invites you to respond. I like the fact that he is not afraid of controversy and uses his power and adulation to tell us what he really thinks.

He can be a provocateur:

“I don’t care what people think. People are stupid..”
“I love New York City, I’ve got a gun”.
“If I weren’t earning $3 million a year to dunk a basketball most people on the street would run the other direction if they saw me coming.”

He can be self-effacing:

“I am not a role model. Just because I can dunk a basketball doesn’t mean I should raise your kids.”
“See these are my new shoes. They’re good shoes, but they won’t make you rich like me, they won’t make you rebound like me, they definitely won’t make you handsome like me. They’ll only make you have shoes like me.”

At his induction a week ago Friday, Charles used the platform once again as a channel for his honesty and humor. He said he lost 32 lbs. for the event, so that he wouldn’t have to waddle to the stage. He thanked everybody who helped him and then said he knew he was fat because, “If you get tired from walking, and that’s all that golf is, then you are officially fat.”

He closed, saying to his wife Maureen, “Thank you for putting up with me, including those times I was arrested.” To his friends and family, “Thank you for my life,” and told the rest of to love our kids so they could love others, “otherwise they turn into people who come to games and call you names.”


I think Charles is a real role model. I hope he runs for governor because I think he’d run the state just like he played basketball — hard and straight.

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Last week, Steve Erwin, the 44-year-old Australian naturalist, zoo keeper, and TV personality was killed by a stingray. Steve the real “Crocodile Dundee” was a regular on The Tonight Show where his boundless energy, thick Australian accent, and sense of humor endeared him to millions. I remember him bringing some baby kangaroos to the show and handing them to Jay who inspected them and asked, “Are those their pouches?” Steve looked at Jay with deadpan seriousness and said, “No, those are their testicles.”


He was a dedicated conservationist who got things done at the local level. He bought tracts of land to protect endangered Australian habitats. He changed our attitudes about some of the world’s most dangerous animals.

Steve Irwin was filming an underwater documentary called The Ocean’s Deadliest when he swam too close to a large stingray. The normally shy and evasive creature lashed out reflexively, sending its sharp, serrated tail-stinger directly into Steve’s heart. He was dead by the time they got him out of the water.

My first thought was, what are the astronomic odds of dying from a stingray dart? Then I reflected on the fact that a week previously, I was diving very close to the reef where Steve died. What is the lesson here? A bumper-sticker flashed to mind: “Life is Short, Then you Die,” but you never think that it’s going to end with such a lightening bolt. Then I thought, what a way to go. I mean how bad can that be, dying doing something and being somewhere you love. Maybe these are Steve’s lessons for us:

Be respectful of all things and beings and when swimming in new waters, don’t be so intrusive that you invite fear and retribution.

Life is always over before you know it. Death can come like a lightening bolt, so do what you love doing, and do it every day, as long as you can. If you’re lucky, be doing it when your number’s up.

Live your life in a way that makes a difference to somebody and something other than yourself, because after you’re gone that’s how you’ll be remembered.


Crikey! Steve, you beauty, peace be with you.

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I just returned from a fabulous month in Australia where I was regaled by wonders, both natural and human. From the rainforests to the Red Center and Great Barrier Reef, the scenery was spectacular and the people friendly, receptive and kind.


We arrived back in the States in L.A. where we cleared Customs and then went to a domestic terminal for our flight home. Going through security, they confiscated all my wife’s liquid makeup, sealed medicine, sprays and water bottle, citing new regulations since the London airport scare.

I picked up the morning newspaper, the first one I’d read since being away, where I read that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thinks critics of the United States war strategy in Iraq demonstrate a “new type of fascism.” He said those of us who believe the war in Iraq is a disaster are aiding the enemy. We are the same weaklings who appeased Adolf Hitler before World War II, and we are suffering “moral or intellectual confusion.”

Rumsfeld wants the American people to believe that if you’re against this war, you are the enemy. The Bush Administration, which in its purported pursuit of freedom and spreading of democracy, has created a world of escalating sectarian violence and expanding nuclear nations. An Administration whose go-it-alone bravado has created an all-time low in the world credibility, and Rumsfeld wants to portray dissenters as morally and intellectually confused fascists.

I was on the plane coming home and feeling so disgusted I wished it would turn around and go back to Australia (or maybe New Zealand, an uninhabited atoll in Micronesia). But here I am an American patriot who is blessed to be able to labor on this day and to see that the best way to protect this great country is to see that he goes and not me.

In the meantime, I have finally summoned the courage to cancel the morning paper. If I’m not going back to Australia, I can at least import the wonder of starting every day with a prayerful meditation, then morning coffee with a book of poetry, Anne Lamott, Allen Klein or George Carlin. Then I’ll hum on my new digeradoo, and it’ll help me start my day with joy.


Just when I think all hope is lost, something surprises me and a spark is kindled. My grandson wants to kick my butt in a basketball game and I tell him that day may come but it’s not today. You can’t eliminate grief, you can just play more basketball.

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