Where and when will you pray? In my 17-day test period, I tried several different approaches, and what I concluded is that I need a special little place at home, plus something I can always take with me that can anchor me into the prayer mindset wherever I go. Of the 11 prayer days during [...]
Mark Nassutti
You are currently viewing the author archives of Mark
Author Archives
Prayer Post 2: How Prayer Helped An Agnostic Achieve a Breakthrough
In my last post, I talked about how just a few days of prayer changed my life. Here’s an example. I’ve been dating my girlfriend for nearly seven years. For much of that time, I’ve had some things on my mind that I’ve wanted to say but haven’t — for fear that I would anger [...]
Prayer Post 1: How This Agnostic Did In My 17-Day Test of the Power of Prayer
A bit more than two weeks ago I wrote a post about prayer. My friend and Chinese herbal medicine and Shiatsu practitioner, Brad, had asked me one day “Do you pray?” In that mid-October post, I publicly challenged myself to pray every day for the rest of the month – 17 days — and then [...]
Can Prayer Help Me, an Agnostic? Does It Help You?
I pay regular visits to Tim, my massage therapist; Mark, my chiropractor; and Brad, the guy I call my Asian healer: he does acupuncture, shiatsu massage and Chinese herbal medicine. They help me deal with recurrent back pain, something I’ve been dealing with since high school. I have nothing mechanically wrong with my back. The [...]
Anger Management and Exercise
Swimming and bicycling saved my life. I was 28 when a business coach told me that if I didn’t address my anger problem, I would die before I was 35. He stopped me cold. I wasn’t angry, I thought. But mine was a quiet, inner-directed anger, the kind of anger that leads to over-achievement, perfectionism, [...]
Anger management?
It took two Buddhist monks to shift my understanding of anger. The first was Gen Jangsem, at the time a monk associated with the Kadampa Buddhist Temple in Seattle. I attended a workshop he taught about anger. He started by questioning the usefulness of anger. If anger had any positive purpose, he said, then shouldn’t [...]
What is Trieste?
And how is Trieste relevant to my story? Fellow writers, upon reading an early version of my book, challenged me with a question: “You’ve written about your own experience and your experience with your children, but you’ve hardly mentioned your father. You didn’t show up to the challenges fatherhood a blank slate. How did he [...]
Why write a memoir?
My inspiration came from the reactions of friends and family to emails I wrote while my son Andrew battled brain cancer. They wanted to know what was going on. Each time I was about to hit “Send,” I couldn’t help but feel that I was imposing on them, or at least depressing them with the [...]