RSS FEEDBeing 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
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 […]
In these days…
Some days, I’m sure, most of us can identify with the famous saying, “These are the times that try men’s souls.” From plane crashes to invasions, from forest fires to desperate refugee children on our borders, from one friend to another relative stricken down by illness—these days we are hard pressed to find solace for […]
Independence Day Thoughts
As always, on approaching the 4th of July holiday, I turn to my texts to review what our founders actually had to say about many things. Here are a few quotes that struck me this week: “…All men are entitled to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience; and therefore no […]
Branches of Buddhism
There are two main branches of Buddhism, Mahayana and Theravada, both formed after the Buddha’s death. Theravada Buddhism and Mahayana Buddhism share the same core beliefs and devotion to the life and teaching of Buddha. Both share the common basic Buddhist teachings of Four Noble Truths, Eightfold path, etc., but they do have some differences. […]
Easter Morning
On many and many an Easter morning through the years, I have opened, as I did today, a book by Dr. Peter Marshall called The First Easter to fill my being with the deep and present reality of “resurrection.” I commend the book to you on this holy day. And I quote from it the […]
Journey Toward Oneness
As I enter this my 76th year, I notice myself going through yet another cycle of self-reflection, one in which I am sometimes dismayed as I look back over the many and various ways I have, often, “missed the mark,” or “fallen short,” or simply “misunderstood” something essential to my wholeness. This painful realization can […]
