Entries from February 2008

February 28, 2008

And the mystic applauds…

From Anthony de Mello - The Heart of the Enlightened
    An ancient legend has it that when God was creating the world, He was approached by four angels. The first one asked, “How are you doing it?” The second, “Why are you doing it?” The third, “Can I be of help?” The fourth, “”What is [...]

February 22, 2008

Of single-minded focus

But there is the danger and the temptation to you, of drawing your minds into your business (busyness), and clogging them with it; so that you can hardly do anything to the service of God, but there will be crying, my business, my business; and your minds will go into the things, and not over [...]

February 21, 2008

Why I don’t vote… can I say that here?

 I want to preface this by saying that I am finding myself increasingly not alone. Some of my most admireds are saying some of the same things. Greg Boyd, Mark Van Steenwyk, and others… although my thoughts are my own, coming from a number of years of thinking about this. During this time, it seems [...]

February 18, 2008

Absolute relativist… relative absolutist?

Thanks to Bob Hyatt for bringing this up. Len Sweet in Relevant Magazine… raises an important issue.
“I am both an absolutist and a relativist,” he [Len Sweet] says. “You can’t escape absolutism. To say there are no absolutes is in itself absolute. The Pharisees were the absolutists. Pilate [was] the relativist, asking ‘What is [...]

February 18, 2008

When questioning becomes trendy

Rainer Maria Rilke, one of the patron saints of The Shepherd and the Knucklehead, writes in Letters to a young Poet:
You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to [...]

February 16, 2008

Questions on Pilgrimage

To journey without being change is to be a nomad.
To change without journeying is to be a chameleon.
To journey and be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim. ~Mark Nepo
I’ve been reading the latest issue of Hungry Hearts, which is dedicated to the pilgrimage… to journeying. I am left with many, many [...]

February 15, 2008

Glossing over self

Something I have been experiencing a lot lately is our tendency to cover who we really are with hypotheticals, theoreticals, and postulations. We give the appearance of going deep and thinking hard, but we skim the surface. Showing people our brain is good and well, but what about our heart, our gut, the depths of [...]