I don’t know if this is a political problem, a spiritual one, or a psychological one: I’m fairly certain it’s all of the above. Or maybe it just feels that way based on all the space it’s taking up in my mind. How do people overcome the obstacles—fatigue, disappointment, magical thinking—that make them reluctant to [...]
We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the vitriolic words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.
Dr. Martin Luther King
In the Hebrew calendar, this is the time of t’shuvah, literally turning, but often translated as repentance. In preparation for the new year, [...]
I wish so many people didn’t hate the phrase “paradigm shift,” because it really does the job of conveying one highly specific thought: that an old model of how things work is receding at the approach of a new and more powerful model (in the words of Ken Wilber, one that “subsumes and transcends” the [...]
My heart goes out to President Obama on his thus far unrequited desire to form a more perfect union with the other party. I understand what he is trying to do, but I’m worried that he doesn’t understand why it won’t succeed just now.
Consensus is a beautiful idea. In Aristotle’s philosophy, everything has a [...]
With timing I’d like to claim as atypical but is probably the opposite, we are trying to sell our house. That puts me somewhere near the bleeding edge of the rather remarkable shakeout we are now experiencing. The image that keeps coming to me is a Gargantuan dog arising from slumber, noisily shaking itself awake, [...]
I have been trying to clear my mind of obstacles so I can think without the impediments created by attachment to things as they appear to be. If that sounds a little abstract, imagine a farmer prying stumps or boulders out of a field before plowing and sowing; or a painter smoothing and priming a [...]
My relationship to the idea of God is in constant flux. My one certainty is that literalist, fundamentalist views can’t possibly encompass whatever could be true. The irony is that literalists come from two camps, both of which were evidently established sometime before the invention of metaphor or symbolism. Some literalists are doctrinaire believers, certain [...]
This has been a week of collecting horror stories of behavior by people who seem to utterly lack a moral compass. As a friend of mine said, “Sometimes the world offends me.” But is it true? Are some people entirely lacking, without moral conscience in the way that someone might be born without wisdom teeth, [...]
A small gray bird lives in a palm tree in my back yard. Every few minutes for the past several weeks, the bird flies straight toward a high window, then pecks at it with vigor and determination. So far the window holds. A friend asked me to write here about the immigration issue. Every time [...]
Everywhere I look these days, I see an new, integrated awareness emerging from collaborations that transcend just about every conventional boundary there is: national borders, cultural differences, race, religion, gender—you name it.
Two weeks ago, my good friend was one of more than 1200 people attending an event at the Pachamama Alliance, an extraordinary group [...]
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