Each of us is called to step up to the plate, to be engaged in life in ways that challenge and inspire us. In fact, when we are unwilling to do so we cannot experience the fullness of what it means to be alive. This takes courage.
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When Hope Seems Lost
The world has been going to hell, the creek has been rising and life as we know it has been about to end at least as far back as the beginning of recorded history. In the third century BCE the writer of Ecclesiastes bemoaned that there was “nothing new under the sun”; that all was vanity and futility.
The Roman emperor and stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations, written while campaigning on the northern border of the Roman Empire, and whose honesty and sagacity have been an inspiration to many, wrote, Continue reading
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A New Consciousness is Here
The other week I received a brochure for a weekend seminar at Texas Christian University entitled “Emerging Christianity – new ways of thinking, being and following Christ.” This sounded inviting so I opened up the brochure to see more details. The outline invited attendees to “Explore with us“ and at the top of the list to explore was a line that both startled and excited me. It read, “What is non-dual thinking and being?”
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Posted in General, Spirituality
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Discovering a Sense of Place
When I was a teenager growing up in Cardiff, Wales I would often go on walks to the hills that surrounded the city. It was a beautiful area of farms, meadows, and heavy woodland. One particular wood held a special significance for me because in the deep shade of its forest canopy there were three little streams that came together at a single point. I loved to visit this place of convergence and just sit and contemplate the little rivulets flowing together under their cover of ferns and woodland flowers.
What made this place so significant for me? It was long before I knew anything of meditation or even of spiritual awareness. It certainly had little to compare to the church services I had attended. And yet something in my soul responded to the quiet beauty of this ordinary place and I felt as though I were beholding a part of nature’s mystery and order. Arising from my simple watchfulness I always felt renewed and ready to go back to the world of football games, school and girlfriends with a greater sense of possibility. Today I would probably call those times gazing at the streams in the wood mystical experiences, moments of recognition where inside and outside, Spirit and matter are one. But the feeling was not high fallutin’ in any way. It was simply real. Continue reading
Posted in Environmental Issues, General, Spirituality
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Creation Care and the Green Movement
A paradigm shift is taking place; one in which humankind’s spiritual nature recognizes our role in caring for this sacred landscape known as Mother Earth.
Everything is connected. We are all one. These statements are at the very center of Unity thinking and are reflected in the mystical, unitive teachings that lie at the heart of all the world’s spiritual traditions. They also underlie the core organizing principles of the ecological or green movement. James Lovelock’s hypothesis of the earth as Gaia: a single, yet complex organism in delicate balance, is dramatically reinforced by the breathtaking photographs of earth taken from space. No boundaries can be seen, everything is interconnected.
This is an inspiring realization, and we may intellectually acknowledge it as true, but it requires attentiveness and Continue reading
Posted in Environmental Issues
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Loosening the Bonds
We have all experienced moments when we felt joyously and exuberantly free. Perhaps this feeling accompanied a particular success or achievement. Often it comes unexpectedly, for no apparent reason, the gratuitous bestowing of God’s grace. In this moment of freedom our earthly worries and fears seem to suddenly fade into insignificance and a confidence arises, a sense that everything is possible. The mean-spirited or aggrandizing ego is irrelevant here. Life is no longer finite. Instead, a great wave of magnanimity floods our being, a wave that rolls in on an ocean of generosity and compassion.
I remember as a young man, just out of college, standing on a beautiful seashore on the island of Continue reading
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