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The Ultimate, A Quotation
“…It is not that certain peoples such as the old Japanese believed that individual ‘spirits’ or ‘souls’ inhabited stones and trees, but that the One and Only Being, manifesting both simultaneously and successively through an indefinite multiplicity of states, spiritual, psychic, and physical, aroused their awe and received their reverence in and through one of […]
Living in Beauty
All religions share a reverence for the fullness of beauty around us: “The kingdom of God is within you and all around you.” Gnostic Gospel, Christianity “Why should there be a reservoir when there is a flood everywhere?” The Upanishads, Hindu “The Way holds all things within Itself. Like the vastness of the universe, it […]
Through Love Alone
Recently I discovered that my 9th great grandmother was tortured as a witch in Europe during the Inquisition. This led me to reflect yet again on how violence is engendered by religious extremism of every type in every age. The news today is full of stories of ISIS and “radical Islam,” and, on other […]
Being Gentle With Myself
Have you noticed? Often “Tis the season to be jolly” is followed by the season of wintry gloom and depression, the time of being downcast, of being revisited in the still of the night by the sorrows and sadness of our past or of the world? I have. Between that annual recurrence of melancholy and […]
Listening
“All things and all people, so to speak, call on us with small or loud voices. They want us to listen. They want us to understand their intrinsic claims, their justice of being. But we can give it to them only through the love that listens.” Paul Tillich
The Tragedy in Missouri
The gift of age can be to have a long view of things, allowing one to assess current events in the light of one’s history. The present tragedy in race relations, unfolding before our eyes on television, reminds me so much of the 1960’s during the upheaval of the civil rights movement. This similarity sometimes […]
Naming the Essence
The following excerpt concerns a people and a place about which I personally know almost nothing, but about which I have long been deeply interested and to which, somehow, on a spiritual dimension, at least, I feel connected. The quote comes from a book given to me recently by a friend who feels, as I […]
Thoughts Concerning Halloween, Ancient and Modern
Thoughts Concerning Halloween, Ancient and Modern This week many of us in our culture will celebrate Halloween with pumpkin carving, gift giving, trick or treating, and many other joyous ceremonies. When we do so, we will be only the latest among many thousands of years of people who have marked this occasion, not necessarily in […]
Common Ground
Common Ground: “Stay away from those who consider themselves to be learned. They walk around in fine clothes and like to be noticed so that they might be honored in public. They take seats of honor in synagogues, and at feasts. These hypocrites steal from widows even as they repeat long prayers. The judgment that […]
Ever Complex
I have been thinking about nuance. Webster: “Nuance: a slight or delicate variation in tone, color, or meaning; shade of difference.” Hmm. Shade of difference. So a nuanced statement would acknowledge and incorporate shades of differences. And then there’s complexity. Webster: “Complex: consisting of two or more related parts; involved, complicated, intricate, not simple.” (I […]
