This last year has been and continues to be a challenging time for everyone. I have been giving some thought to what we can each do to maintain our own energy--and energy hygiene--so that we may stand each in our strength and integrity, and support ourselves and others. We each hold the possibility, and the opportunity, to make positive change, and it can happen in simple and subtle ways. It can be summed up as: share your self light. This of course means that first you need to recognize and nurture your own light. And how do we do this when we are stressed by outside events and … [Read more...]
Coping With Conflict All Around Us
We are overwhelmed at this time with conflict and suffering: internationally and at home, political, racial, economic, environmental...and I have been silently observing and wondering how to address all this. Today I read a thoughtful piece by David Spangler that offers some sage suggestions on how to cope with the onslaught, and I am moved to share his perspective with you. Thank you, David. The Spirit Amongst Us By David Spangler These are heart-heavy days. Nearly every day, the media bring us news of more suffering, more deaths, more anguish in the world. One … [Read more...]
Alert and Available
How often do you worry about the future? Or feel stuck or drawn back by something or someone in the past that you can’t seem to get past? Human mind and emotion have a persistent way of distracting us from the present. We struggle with the business of being human--that is, surviving physically and emotionally--and we think far too much about it, often engendering fear. This is our nature and our habit, and it is reinforced relentlessly by our cultures (including family, work, and community cultures) and by the realities of survival. We are shaped by our pasts, by our attachments and … [Read more...]
Nonviolent Action and Incarnational Spirituality
As we observe the fiftieth anniversary (on August 28th) of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and Martin Luther King’s transcendent “I Have a Dream” speech, I am reminded of the quiet power and effectiveness of nonviolent collaborative community effort directed towards achieving common goals. Nonviolent action achieves its objectives without using violence, but rather through symbolic protests, civil disobedience, economic or political noncooperation, and other means. The modern form of non-violent resistance was most notably practiced by Mahatma Gandhi, and subsequently followed … [Read more...]