Attuned to Soul

“Tragedy and suffering will come to us. We cannot insulate ourselves from them. We cannot avoid them. They come in their own season and in their own time. When they come, they may overwhelm us and immobilize us. For a time, we are living inside a scream where there seems to be no exit, only … Continue reading Withstanding Tragedy

“Now at this time Caesar Augustus issued a decree for a census of the whole world to be taken… So Joseph set out from the town of Nazareth in Galilee and traveled up to Judaea, to the town of David called Bethlehem…in order to be registered together with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. … Continue reading Glory to God in the Lowest

“The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we know ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, “I am all of the above.” If we can’t embrace … Continue reading Holiness is Wholeness

“Gratitude is not a passive response to something we have been given; gratitude arises from paying attention, from being awake in the presence of everything that lives within and without us…Gratitude is the understanding that many millions of things come together and live together and mesh together and breathe together in order for us to … Continue reading Gratitude, Attention, Prayer

“…there is a pervasive form of contemporary violence to which the idealist…easily succumbs: activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of its innate violence. To allow one’s self to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too many demands, … Continue reading Succumbing to Violence

Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Borgart), having had a bit too much to drink the night before, awakens to find Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn) pouring his bottles of gin into the Zambezi River. “Whatcha bein’ so mean for, miss?” he pleads. A man takes a drop too much once in a while, it’s…it’s only human nature. “Nature, … Continue reading Intoxication

“Depression, aggression, stress, and purposelessness are some of the common symptoms of our time. People wonder why we are plagued with such things and how to get rid of them. As I see it, the problem is that we have lost religion – in the deep meaning of the word. We have formal religions that … Continue reading Real Religion

     “There are many varieties of addiction, but, sooner or later, we each have to address what is the paramount addiction in the Western world: our psychological dependence on the world-view and lifestyle of Western civilization itself…The Western worldview says, in essence, that technological progress is the highest value and that we were born to … Continue reading The Paramount Addiction

“Every day, I get closer to the brink of everything. We’re all headed that way, of course, even when we’re young, though most of us are too busy with Important Matters to ponder our mortality. But when a serious illness or accident strikes, or someone dear to us dies – or we go to a … Continue reading Living on the Brink

“I am… noisy full of the racket of my imperfections and passions, and the wide open wounds left by my sins. Full of my own emptiness. Yet, ruined as my house is, You live there.” “No matter how low you may have fallen in your own esteem, bear in mind that if you delve deeply … Continue reading Hitting Bottom