Your life is much deeper and broader than you conceive it to be here. What you are living is but a fractional inkling of what is really within you, what gives you life, breadth, and depth. But you can live in terms of your depth. And when you can experience it, you suddenly see that all the religions are talking of that. ~Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, p. 58
O to live our depth. Namaste.
image: John Marino www.artshole.co.uk/johnmarino.htm
We will not fulfill humanity by fixating on humanity any more than we will fulfill the self by fixating on the self. . . . We are living in deep illusion if we think human development, in and of itself, is the primary purpose of creation. ~jpc, The Heart of Creation, p. 152
We all live in the “developing world” of care for creation. Namaste.
It is easy to say no. To say yes you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no. . . . No is one of your man-made words. Can you imagine a world in which trees say no to the sap? ~Jean Anouilh, “Antigone,” via Brian Stanfield’s The Courage to Lead, p. 237
O to say yes to the sap. Namaste.
[Paul’s] question whether circumcision is a condition of justification is today, I consider, the question whether religion is a condition of salvation. Freedom from circumcision is at the same time freedom from religion. ~Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, pp. 164-65
Bonhoeffer also uses the phrase “religionless Christianity” (p. 163). We don’t know practically what he meant, since he was never out of prison to be a “practicing” Christian again. ~jpc
Thankfully we do not have to be “religious” to be “saved.” Namaste.
The “burning bush” was not a miracle. It was a test. God wanted to find out if Moses could pay attention to something for more than a few minutes. When Moses did, God spoke. The trick is to pay attention to what is going on around you long enough to behold the miracle without falling asleep. There is another world, right here within this one, whenever we pay attention. ~Lawrence Kushner, God Was in this Place and I, I Didn’t Know
O to pay attention for at least five minutes today, standing before one bush. Namaste.
Journer: What is most awesome to you?
Nez: My student* said, “The moment one gives close attention to anything, even a blade of grass, it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself.”
Journer: I asked “most awesome”?
Nez: You are, right now.
______
* attributed to Henry Miller
When I say “I am,” I do not mean a separate entity with a body at its nucleus. I mean the totality of being, the ocean of consciousness, the entire universe of all that is and knows. ~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj http://tinyurl.com/2aa3zf
In this context, Muhammad Ali was correct in saying, “I’m the greatest.” ~jpc
Namaste.
image: girl in Assam, India, 6/24/07 (REUTERS You Witness News/Hemanta Kumar Nath)
George Gerbner . . . says that to control a nation, you don’t have to control its laws or its military, all you have to do is control who tells the nation its stories. Television tells most of the nation most of its stories most of the time. If television is our social brain, then American television currently has the highest level of intelligence that beer and car commercials can buy. And this dumbing down of the U.S. public is happening at the very time when we face unprecedented social upheaval and change. . . . The essence of a civilization’s growth is its ability to transfer increasing increments of energy and attention from the material side of life to the psychological, spiritual, cultural, and aesthetic. ~Duane Elgin, “Upshifters: Pioneers of an Awakening,” interviewed in Yes! magazine, Spring/Summer 1996 (Issue Beta 1)
Namaste.
Believing in Jesus . . . means to give . . . one’s self at the deepest level . . . to the post-Easter Jesus who is the living Lord, . . . the face of God, the Lord who is also the Spirit . . . a figure of the present. ~Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, p. 137
“Believing in Jesus” is a doorway to spirit. ~jpc
Spirit is the spirit of . . . God, Christ, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, etc. Namaste.
image: Shirley Vanderbilt's underwater photographic print of "Christ of the Abyss Statue" www.art.com (compare to image used earlier http://tinyurl.com/2kw5xv)
The ultimate aim of the quest must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but the wisdom and power to serve others. ~Joseph Campbell, a lecture quoted by Bill Moyers in the introduction to The Power of Myth, p. xv
Tell our civilization that our ultimate aim is not to seek personal release and ecstasy and watch for the response. ~jpc
O for wisdom and power to serve others. Namaste.
image: 2000 naked volunteers pose for U.S. photographer Spencer Tunick in parking building in Amsterdam, 6/3/07 (REUTERS/Koen van Weel)
Eliade in his many writings is reminding us of past man’s [sic] vision of life amidst the sacred that present man must regain if there is to be future man. ~Philip H. Ashby Theology Today Vol. 27, No. 2 (July 1970) (via Wikipedia)
Do we see ourselves living in the sacred? This is a fundamental question of our reason for living. ~jpc
O to witness to the sacred in our midst. Namaste.
Boss: “[F]inally there are those who aim at living the life of the entire universe – everything, men, animals, trees, stars, we are all one, we are all one substance involved in the same terrible struggle. What struggle? . . . Turning matter into spirit.”
Zorba [scratching his head]: “I’ve got a thick skull, boss, I don’t grasp these things easily. . . . Ah, if only you could dance all that you’ve just said, then I’d understand.”
~Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek, p. 278
O to dance matter into spirit. Namaste.
Journer: What unites religions?
Nez: My student* said, “The lamps are different but the Light is the same: it comes from Beyond.”
Journer: What real difference does the same Light make?
Nez: O that we all bowed to the one divine reality, which is all there is.
______
* Rumi, Poet and Mystic, trans. R.A. Nicholson, p. 166
image: M87 [NASA/CXC/W. Forman, et al.] black hole sits at the center of the bright spot of light http://tinyurl.com/3brxnq
[W]e are in God, we live in God, we move and have our being in God. God is a nonmaterial layer of reality all around us, “right here” as well as “more than right here.” ~Marcus Borg, The Heart of Christianity, p. 155
Borg uses the phrase “the More” synonymously with “God.” ~jpc
Spirit is present and more than present. Namaste.
Joe Campbell said that life is in the experience, but I also think that life is in the meaning we give that experience. He and I differed on that. ~Bill Moyers, “Your Mythic Journey,” with Sam Keen
Both Campbell and Moyers are right, and I’d add one more thing, the sharing of the meaning of the experience, or “witnessing” to others of that truth – for their sakes and our own. ~jpc
Shared experience and meaning are empowering. Namaste.
image: "Birth painting" by Ghislaine Howard http://www.ghislainehoward.com/mat.htm
The only myth that’s going to be worth thinking about in the immediate future is one talking about the planet – not this city, not these people, but the planet and everybody on it. ~Joseph Campbell, with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, p. 32
Planet Earth – everybody on it and everything on it, in it, and encircling it – is the only neighbor-story worth thinking about now. ~jpc
All of it is under the big tent of salvation. Namaste.
If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. ~Howard Zinn, “The Optimism of Uncertainty” http://www.thenation.com/doc/20040920/zinn
The message: look more carefully when you succumb to the impossibility our world throws at us, especially the media. ~jpc
We give thanks for pioneers of a different direction. Namaste.
image http://tinyurl.com/2b4u29 (some of these we may not give thanks for, now, or ever)
For Christians, the ultimate mystery that stands as the very source and being of the universe and all within it finally boils down to grace. We live in God’s grace. That’s the essential meaning and message of Christian faith. ~David Grant, Thinking Through Our Faith, p. 119
Paul, Luther, Wesley, Tillich, Mathews, Grant, and I agree. ~jpc
“. . . was blind but now I see.” Namaste.
We are living in a world that is absolutely transparent, and God is shining through it all the time. . . . God shows himself [sic] everywhere, in everything – in people and in things and in nature and in events. ~Thomas Merton, The Hidden Ground of Love (via Borg’s The Heart of Christianity, p. 155)
This is one of the best quotes on “transparency” I know, my favorite image of seeing and dialoguing with spirit. ~jpc
“See that I am.” Namaste.
image: Michael Pinsky's Transparent Room suspends the viewer in a virtual space; you see through the walls and the ceiling to the sky, hidden rooms, the street outside; the room that you enter no longer exists www.contemporaryartforum.ca/probing.htm
In the Babylonian Talmud, . . . there is a teaching from Rav Yosef as follows: When Moses came down from Sinai and saw the Israelites rejoicing over the Golden Calf, he smashed the two tablets of stone. . . . Then he returned to the top of Sinai and received another set. What happened to the broken set? Rav Yosef teaches that Moses put the pieces of the broken tablets in the Ark next to the unbroken second set. He did this to teach that even that which is broken is holy and remains with that which is whole. ~Steven A. Chester, Temple Sinai, Oakland, California
Wholeness is full of brokenness. Namaste.
The tree the tempest with a crash of wood
Throws down in front of us is not to bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good
But just to ask us who we think we are. . .
~Robert Frost, “A Tree Fallen Across the Road”
The journey is our friend, come what may. Sometimes it stops us, addresses us, and commissions us to live another day. Namaste.
image http://tinyurl.com/2p9688
There is one power that surpasses the all-consuming power of time – the eternal: . . . Who was and is and is to come, the beginning and the end, . . . [who] gives us forgiveness for what has passed, . . . courage for what is to come . . . [and] rest in . . . eternal Presence. ~Tillich, The Eternal Now, p. 132 (sans gender reference)
The eternal we abide in, even now. Namaste.
image: "Eternal Life of Buddha," by Genggu Liu http://tinyurl.com/3xe53y
I have abandoned the quest for the historical Jesus, conceived as an objective, value-free endeavor. Instead, I am in quest of the originative impulse released by Jesus. ~Walter Wink, “Write What You See: An Odyssey” (1994) http://tinyurl.com/yo8v53
[Martin Buber’s] funeral took place [June 14, 1965] . . . at the Hill of Rest in Jerusalem. . . . On his tombstone is a phrase from the 73rd Psalm – “I am continually with thee.” ~Stephen Panko, Martin Buber, p. 43
The “I” is the Psalmist: “I am continually with Thee; / Thou hast held me by my right hand” (v. 23/KJ21). The “Thou” is “Lord God.” Even his last testament speaks of I-Thou, what his life was about. ~jpc
Doesn’t get any better than that. Namaste.
image: "Martin Buber," by Andy Warhol http://tinyurl.com/ywo2jc
Faith is not about historical events in the past or eschatological events in the future but is about our lives here and now and the way we see our lives in the ultimate context of God. What is religiously significant is not who Jesus was, but who Jesus is as a living spirit. . . . ~David Grant, Thinking Through Our Faith, p. 85
The past and future do help determine the way we see our lives, but our relationship to the living spirit is the thing. ~jpc
The spirit of taking a new relationship is ours this day. Namaste.
image: clown smiles sadly, Covent Garden, London 5/13/07 (REUTERS, YouWitness/Clarel Thomas)
Journer: What is a concise philosophy of the universe?
Nez: My student* said, “All are but parts of one stupendous whole, / Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.”
Journer: Do you think God is the soul of the universe?
Nez: What do you think?
______
* ~Alexander Pope, “An Essay on Man” (Epistle I: X, 267-68)
image: "Labyrinth" by Ellen Howie
When we touch [the treasure of happiness], even once, we know that we have the capacity of letting go of everything else. That treasure of happiness, the Kingdom of Heaven, may be called the ultimate dimension of reality. When you see only waves, you might miss the water. ~Thich Nhat Hanh, Living Buddha, Living Christ, “Touching the Water within the Waves,” p. 157
The real question is whether this [New Testament] understanding of existence is true. Faith claims that it is, and faith ought not to be tied down to the imagery of New Testament mythology. ~Rudolf Bultmann, Kerygma and Myth (first published 1948), p. 11
A few pages earlier (p. 4), Bultmann writes: “. . . it is no longer possible for anyone seriously to hold the New Testament view of the world – in fact, there is no one who does.” And a mighty howl went up back in ‘48. ~jpc
O to hear the truth in the midst of our chosen mythology. Namaste.
image: "Heaven and Hell II" www.carmenlomasgarza.com/.../heavenandhell.html
.jpg)
Volume III of Daily Spirit Journal: Quotes and Reflections for 365 Days (224 pp.) can be shipped to you in late August 2007. Reserve your copy(s) now for free shipping, or a total of $11.95 in the USA (reserve at transcribebooks@triad.rr.com). Read what readers are saying at www.transcribebooks.com: "Read About.")
E-mail and Online Reflections
Since August 19, 2004, I have been sharing spirit reflections through a daily online blog and e-mail list, and compiling those into three volumes. Over 1,500 daily e-mail and blog postings bring us to the publication of volume III of Daily Spirit Journal (the daily reflections over thirty-six months are archived here on the right sidebar).
Thousands of people from most every country have participated in over 55,000 reflection views online, and several hundred persons participate daily via an e-mail list and online feed. (E-mail transcribebooks@triad.rr.com and ask to join the daily e-mail list, or join the XML feed on the right sidebar here, or come to this site regularly.)
~jpc
Note: Many have acclaimed the visual images with each daily reflection. These, for many practical reasons, are not included in the book. Sorry, for they make the daily reflection more profound.
And when, in touch with that all-pervasiveness, I hear that the citadel of dearest Huston [Smith] is crumbling, it is simply as it is, just so, and all is still right, and all is still well, and all is still good, and all still radiates the unending glory that we all are. ~Ken Wilber, One Taste, p. 22
Since this 1996 entry by Wilber, Huston has done many lectures and writings, even with a crumbling citadel (he was born in 1919). Even though the citadels of all are crumbling, what Wilber says is true for all, all the time. ~jpc
Here’s to the unending glory. Namaste.
image: Mary Saint-Marie's "Beauty-SHE...of the Universe" http://tinyurl.com/2tzkrq
Even when my happiness isn’t at a rolling boil, I tend to know that there is a spiritual dimension to all things. ~Huston Smith, The Way Things Are: Conversations with Huston Smith on the Spiritual Life http://tinyurl.com/3ax7kz
How do we “tend to know there is a spiritual dimension”? At the very least, when we are stopped, or when we stop to think about it. Maybe I’ll tattoo a visible “S” on my finger. ~jpc
O to be conscious of the spirit dimension. Namaste.
