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Fear and Reassurance
May we all, tormented in spirit in the face of life’s present mysterious tragedies, hearken now to the inner voices within ourselves that speak to us of a transcendent peace and beauty that can and does sustain us through life and death, reminding us of the precious nature of each moment in space and time […]
Balance
Every spiritual tradition I know about emphasizes the concept of balance—the Taoist Yin-Yang, the Native American Medicine Wheel, the Judeo-Christian “to every thing there is a season…” and on and on. Today, prayerfully, as in Japan so much destruction and loss of life has happened, here at home I walked out into my garden to […]
Love’s Calm
Dag Hammarskjold, Secretary General of the UN in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, kept a journal, published posthumously as Markings. He was faced, personally and professionally, with so many calamities that I looked this morning at his published words for comfort and courage, prayerful as I am after the news of last night’s earthquake […]
These Days
Take heart! Although the news each day seems more and more alarming, the political divisions and unrest, at home and abroad, seem more and more severe, do not think that hope is lost. Consider how many times those who came before us had to struggle through overwhelming situations. The conditions of the world have always […]
For Ourselves, Our Nation
One becomes, perhaps, and correctly so, speechless in the face of such enormous events as occurred in Arizona this weekend. After the stillness, though, I look to the words of wise ones from my memory and from my library to fill my thoughts and guide my own speech and actions. Here are some of them: […]
Kindling Fire, A Midwinter Message
I am told that in a few weeks, on the evening of the winter solstice, there will be a full eclipse of the full moon. That the winter solstice—that time of the changing of seasons from the darkening to the increasing of light—coincides this year with the darkening eclipse and the re-illumination of the full […]
All Paths
A quote from Vivekananda in 1893 at his address to the Parliament of Religions in Chicago: “…I will quote to you, brethren, a few lines from a hymn which I remember to have repeated from my earliest boyhood, which is every day repeated by millions of human beings: ‘As the different streams having their sources […]
Perrenial Wisdom
Late season blooming, the camellia, even after frost, while I, at 71, giddy this glorious day, on the wind, with golden leaves hawk-tossed, wildly alive, oh yes, always, again.
On Contentment
“The first sign of your becoming religious,” says Vivekananda,”is that you are becoming cheerful.” Christopher Isherwood writes, in his commentary on the Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali: “It is well worth analyzing the circumstances of those occasions on which we have been truly happy. For as John Masefield says, ‘The days that make us happy make […]
