English cheese. A good Cabernet. The smell of chrysanthemums. A clean house. Chelsea’s warm skin when we hug. Scones and clotted cream. Intelligence. Freshly ground coffee, brewed in a French press, with cream. Sunflowers. Rachel’s smile. Solitude and silence. Fresh walleye. Bookstores. Bison. Ethnic food. Navajo rugs and jewelry. Hiking. Public television and radio. Cooking. Chunky chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. …
Today marks a kind of a milestone for me. Five years ago, I decided to give meditation a whirl. Actually, I’d be giving it a second whirl. A million years ago, I took a religion class in college called Mysticism. It was a very popular class. I was lucky to get in. It was taught by a young rabbi who …
Fred Rogers described truly great human beings as those “in touch with the eternal.” Of all the extraordinary people I have known in my life, two in particular most fit that description. One, of course, is Fred himself. The other is a female Zen master named Tuan, who I met many years ago. Tuan is Vietnamese. She was visiting a …
On Saturday, I began a nine-week meditation on nonviolence. Monday morning, the anniversary of the birth of Gandhi, a leader who taught the world so much about nonviolence but died by an assassin’s bullet, I awoke to the horrible news of the carnage in Las Vegas. Although my grandparents saw great hardship in their long lives, I feel certain that …
With the Lenten season almost upon us, I’m reminded again how terribly bad I’ve been lately at sacrificing or “giving up” things for Lent. (Never mind New Year’s resolutions, which are pretty much out of the question. Forget about it.) But about this time last year, I read some theologian say it’s perfectly consistent with Lenten spirituality to “add” something …