Monthly Archives: November 2010

Advent is here.   I always loved the word “advent,” and the notion of preparing ourselves for the coming of something extraordinary, something that is yet to be.   Advent has a special resonance for me today because I’ve been reflecting about what it means to observe ourselves and to be open to others.   In the “Love”Continue reading “Advent”

I’m writing this on Thanksgiving morning here in the Northeast United States.   My daughter Alex and her friend Rhiannon (who is English, which gives us a heightened sense of the holiday) are sleeping. I’m looking out at a grey sky and mostly bare trees, reflecting on the meaning of the turkey and the Nigella LawsonContinue reading “Happy Thanksgiving!”

What does it mean to find a way and follow a way, whether it is Buddhist or Christian or an esoteric path that pre-dates both?  Real knowing, real direct engagement is necessary.  This is what makes a path something other than a college course.   Yet direct knowing has it’s limitations.  Think of the taleContinue reading “The Elephant’s Neck”

When my daughter Alex was in high school, she used to lament that she should have been born in the age of Middle Earth.  Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and Peter Jackson’s three brilliant films of the same depicted a life that corresponded to a greater Reality–a world where a person could be braveContinue reading “The Loaded Gun”

When I was about 16-years-old, I had a biology teacher named Miss B…well, lets just call her Miss B. so I can be completely free with my recollections.  Thin, with a salt and pepper pixie hair cut, Miss B was prim and grimly disapproving of the secular culture of public high school.  School legend hadContinue reading “Plastic Buddha”

“Everyone is gifted–but some people never open up their packages.”  This quote, attributed to everyone from Anonymous to the late great rocker Kurt Cobain, points to the truth that just by being given a body and senses, that just by being given this brief and precious life, we have a unique perspective to explore andContinue reading “The Gift”