"Favorite Resources"

Librarian Nancy Trask of Winterset, Iowa, says: "My favorite three books are Daily Spirit Journal: Quotes & Reflections for 365 Days, by John P. Cock. Volume 1 came out in 2005, Volume 2 in 2006, and Volume 3 in 2007. They are filled with marvelous quotes from thinkers and gurus and artists and poets and theologians of all persuasions, who give us a window into the deeper meanings of life. They are available from Transcribe Books, transcribebooks.com. The author's email is transcribebooks@triad.rr.com.

"The author will be holding a four-session class called Profound Journey Dialogue near Dubuque on September 5-6, 2008. Email him soon because the seats will fill quickly."

~from "Tending Your Inner Garden," Vol. 5, Issue 4, Jan. 30, 2008

Move Toward It

The country [USA] isn’t hungry for a religious left to replace a religious right. They don’t want to go left or right. They want to go deeper. They want to go to a moral center, not a soulless center. ~Jim Wallis on “A Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” 1/23/07, via LLC

With these remarks, that audience clapped and cheered. We all suspect or know there exists a deep, moral, soulful center. ~jpc

Let us move toward it. Namaste.

image: “The End of the Tunnel” http://tinyurl.com/yuhkon

As Its Center

I prefer the metaphorical language of Nicolaus Cusanos.... He says God is in everything as its center, and ... the whole world is his [sic] periphery. ~Paul Tillich http://tinyurl.com/3avfwo

Ditto the preference. That’s where we were coming from with the title of our book At One with the Heart of Creation, or, an earlier one, Our Universal Spirit Journey. “God” and neighbor and I are indivisible. ~jpc

“In everything as its center.” Namaste.

image: the barren Gres de Chinguetti Plateau of central Mauritania in northwest Africa stix1972.typepad.com/stix_blog/space/index.html

Ultimate Seriousness

If people tell you, “I have no ultimate concern,” . . . then ask them, . . . “What, for instance, would you be ready to suffer or even die for?” ~Paul Tillich, Ultimate Concern: Tillich in Dialogue, D. Mackenzie Brown http://tinyurl.com/3avfwo

H. Richard Niebuhr and Ken Wilber, et al., have shared Tillich’s understanding of “ultimate concern” as at the heart of the universal spirit journey. We all are devoted to some “god” or something that we take with ultimate seriousness. ~jpc

Best we figure it out, name it, and serve it . . . or something greater. Namaste.

image: "Blue Horizon" by Peter Wileman http://www.art.com/

Way the Universe Works

We have the unique opportunity to promote green-collar jobs and pathways out of poverty through targeted investments in energy efficiency, mass transit, and a Clean Energy Corps to provide Americans with jobs and service opportunities to reduce energy consumption, boost our economy, and tackle climate change . . . all while putting hundreds of thousands of Americans to work. ~Aditya Nochur, e-mail, 1Sky petition to Congress

I was struck by the thinking here and how so much is coming together, the way the universe works . . . together. ~jpc

It takes a universe to make an orange. Namaste.

image: by Mook http://www.flickr.com/photos/m00k/406631145/

Sunday Dialogue LXXXVII

Journer: What motivates you to care for the earth?

Nez: Someone who’s not my student* said, “Me and nature are two.”

Journer: Say some more.

Nez: If I am at one with the earth, I’ll more likely sacrifice myself for it.
______
* Woody Allen

image: (AFP/Leslie Kossoff) http://tinyurl.com/2shx4w

Ruthless Certainty

What’s dangerous about the world today is not belief in God – or secularism or unbelief – but ruthless certainty. If 2008 is the year when we can begin, in private and in public, to concede that we don’t know all the answers, then let us say amen. ~Lisa Miller, “Moderates Storm the Religious Battlefield,” Newsweek, p. 89, Dec. 31, 2007/Jan. 7, 2008, via LLC

Ruthless certainty shows up especially among religious fundamentalists and radicals of all stripes. ~jpc

May we operate out of love rather than righteous certainty. Namaste.

image: since 1987, Sant'Egidio has gathered in the "Spirit of Assisi" www.santegidio.org/en/contatto/cosa_e_6.html

Soul Creatives

I’m talking about creativity with our own souls. . . . It means perpetually living right on the cutting edge of the life process – where the flowering of spirit as evolution is occurring in every moment. ~Andrew Cohen, from Quote of the Week, 1/14/08

The world needs “soul creatives” everywhere all the time, ones who consciously live in response to ever-present spirit. ~jpc

We’ve cosmic commission to be soulful. Namaste.

image: "Sunrise Contemplation," Susan Sarback (oil), http://tinyurl.com/ytp9xj A Gallery of Spiritual Art (eckankar.org)

Deep River

“[D]eep,” I guess, is kind of a synonym for me for true spirituality – what Eckhart calls the innermost part of the soul, the innermost part of the person. That’s deep. . . . Eckhart says God is a great “underground river [that no one can stop and no one can dam up*].” So we come to this [underground] of being. This is why you have different wells of wisdom. There’s the Jewish well and the Sufi well and the Buddhist well and the Catholic and Protestant, but they sink into one deep underground river. There’s only one divine source. ~Matthew Fox in interview with Jeffrey Mishlove http://www.intuition.org/txt/fox.htm (*bracketed part of quote from Fox’s One River, Many Wells, p. 5)

This is a deep take on what unites us. Religions that would separate us will die of their own idolatrous poison. ~jpc

Shall we all gather at the river and be refreshed and sustained. Namaste.

image: Town of Deep River, Ontario www.countyofrenfrew.on.ca/ITDept/WebPhoto-Arc...

Karaniya Metta Sutta

Hymn of Universal Love . . .

that Myanmar (Burmese) monks chant

1.
Who seeks to promote . . . welfare,
Having glimpsed . . . perfect peace,
Should be able, honest and upright,
Gentle in speech, meek and not proud. . . .
4.
Whatever living creatures there be,
Without exception, weak or strong,
Long, huge or middle-sized,
Or short, minute or bulky. . . .
6.
Let none deceive or decry
The other anywhere;
Let none wish others harm
In resentment or in hate. . . .
8.
Cultivate an all-embracing mind of love
For all throughout the universe,
In all its height, depth and breadth –
Love that is untroubled
And beyond hatred or enmity. . . .

Be careful what you recite: it may get you jailed, beaten, or killed. Namaste.

text: Metta Sutta http://tinyurl.com/yugn94
image current.com/items/87188111_hunted_myanmar_mon...

Hope that Changes Things

Contemplation is what gave the monks of Burma the tranquil courage to walk out of their monasteries and temples last fall, chanting the Metta Sutta of compassion for all beings amid rows of heavily armed soldiers prepared to kill them. It was as moving, as brave, and as defiant an exercise of nonviolence and spiritual strength in action as we may ever see. . . . The ethics of their contemplative life demanded action . . . hope demands everything. ~Rebecca Solnit, “Our Storied Future,” orionmagazine.org, Jan-Feb 2008 issue

Let us contemplate and act in the hope that changes things. Namaste.

image: Myanmar (Burmese) monks weblog.leidenuniv.nl/fdr/1948/2007/10/the_pol...

Love Your Enemies

Here’s what Dr. King got out of the Sermon on the Mount. On Nov. 17, 1957, in Montgomery’s Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, he concluded the learned discourse that came to be known as the “loving your enemies” sermon this way: “So this morning, as I look into your eyes and into the eyes of all of my brothers [sic] in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you: ‘I love you. I would rather die than hate you.’” ~Sarah Vowell, “Radical Love Gets a Holiday,” nytimes.com, 1/21/08

A New Testament scholar said, “Love your enemies is probably the most radical thing Jesus ever said.”* And Martin seems to have embraced that truth more than most others who claim to follow Jesus and call themselves “Christian.” ~jpc

* Note: Robert W. Funk, Just Call Me Bob, p. 59

"What a Wonderful World"

I see skies of blue and clouds of white,

The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night,

And I think to myself, "What a wonderful world!"

~from “What a Wonderful World,” by George David Weiss and Bob Thiele, performed by Louis Armstrong (watch and listen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtPF9M3nIHs&feature=related)

The grandchildren love for us to sing this song to them as they prepare for dreamtime. At whatever age, it’s a ritual that deserves our consciousness at the beginning and end of each day. ~jpc

Oh yeah! Namaste.

image: “Sun,” Trisha 1G http://www.flickr.com/photos/trishagg/408027686/

Sunday Dialogue LXXXVI

Journer: What do you think about death?

Nez: My student* said, “I will be cared for in death as I have been cared for in life. So what’s the problem?”

Journer: Do you believe that?

Nez: ‘Tis the stuff of problemless living.

______
* Thomas Berry, at lunch, 1/15/08

image: photo by Kate Thompson, "A Man Runs Barefoot Across the Desert in Death Valley,"
www.art.com

Be a Great Poem

Love the earth and sun and the animals . . . [and] the people, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem. ~Walt Whitman, from Preface to Leaves of Grass, p. 8, via Beret Griffith

Regularly in your soul rehearse your love for all that is, even if that unbounded love does not jibe with your tradition. Let your soul be the arbiter. In so being, you incarnate life. ~jpc

To change a familiar line: “I’d rather be a poem than hear one any day.” Namaste.

image: with quote, "If you cannot be a poet, be the poem," David Carradine mytopography.com/.../ (click to see enlarged)

Down with Perjoratives

Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists. . . , just as conservatives taunt liberals, progressives, do-gooders, and activists today by making those four terms pejoratives. Healing the wounds of the earth and its people does not require saintliness or a political party, only gumption and persistence. ~Paul Hawken, from intro of Blessed Unrest

And liberals and progressives taunt conservatives. But the point is gumptious, persistent, and active healing of the earth and its people. ~jpc

Pejoratives that get in the way be damned. Namaste.

image 65.38.180.232/blogs/index.php?blog=12

Big Mind & Big Heart Speak

Big Mind: I’m the death of the limited, constricted self. When the bubble pops, there is just me. . . . The self’s biggest fear is popping, in other words, dying. But it has nothing to fear, because when the self physically dies, or the ego dies, I am ever-present. I am unborn and undying. I am always here. Even if the whole world were to go up in an explosion. . . .

Big Heart: I am just as vast, just as infinite, just as eternal . . . as Big Mind. However, I feel. I care. I am heart. I love and I have compassion for all. . . . I am action. Big Mind is non-action. . . . I [yearn] to alleviate suffering and to bring unconditional love to all beings. ~Dennis Genpo Merzel, Big Mind – Big Heart: Finding Your Way, pp. 100-01, via Joseph Slicker

Let us find our way with these ever-present guides. Namaste.

image: read more about Genpo Roshi, aka Reb Merzel http://in.integralinstitute.org/contributor.aspx?id=26

Transparent As a Lens

You can only receive, give, and possess the light as the lens does. If you seek yourself . . . you rob the lens of its transparency. ~Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. 155

Receiving, giving, and possessing the light, as a lens does, suggests that spirit intends to use us as light uses a lens. We are here to be transparent to the power at the heart of every situation. ~jpc

Let me not in a self-centered way rob my life of its ultimate reason for being. Namaste.

image www.taikoeyework.com/index.php?cPath=101

Spirit's Entree

[T]here’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in. ~Leonard Cohen, from interview with Robert Enright, May 2007

One of spirit’s ways of entering our tightly wrapped-up lives is through tiny cracks that let the light peek through, break through, and flood our real situation. Then, sometimes, we realize we can bask in the light or frantically try to wrap life up again, tighter. ~jpc

Revelation is good! Namaste.

image cybernetnews.com/.../

Gift of Grace

Grace is something you can never get but can only be given. There’s no way to earn it or deserve it or bring it about any more than you can deserve the taste of raspberries and cream or earn good looks or bring about your own birth. . . . There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. There’s nothing you have to do. . . . [G]race can only be yours if you’ll reach out and take it. ~Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC, pp. 38-9, via Lewie Pierce

Truly, grace is “that without which” life is impossible. Grace is our greatest gift. ~jpc

Awareness of grace is the beginning of thanksgiving. Namaste.

image: Andria Naeuth photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/72168161@N00/page2/

Sunday Dialogue LXXXVI

Journer: What gives you hope these days?

Nez: That’s easy. My student* said, “Concentrate on what you have left, not just on what you have lost.”

Journer: What's the connection to hope?

Nez: “What we have left” is a portal to possibility that catalyzes creative imagination and response.

______
* Harold Kushner, Overcoming Life’s Disappointments

image: “Simple Chaos” by Carol Ryan www.carolryanfineart.com/acrylics.html

Spirit's Way

[Pope] Benedict was . . . [making] a deeper point worth hearing. In Auschwitz, his contention was that objective truth grounded in God is the only bulwark against the blind will to power; his Regensburg address was devoted to reason and faith, arguing that reason shorn of faith becomes nihilism, while faith without reason ends in fanaticism and violence; and in Brazil, he argued that since Christ embraces all humanity, he cannot be foreign to anyone’s spiritual experience. ~John L. Allen, Jr., “The Vatican’s Relative Truth,” nytimes.com, 12/19/07

If Benedict is saying 1) spirit power is the ultimate power in the universe, 2) reason and faith not grounded in spirit can go berserk, and 3) everyone experiences spirit . . . then a loud “Amen.” ~jpc

We live and move and have our being in spirit. Namaste.

image: photo by Quizz… http://www.flickr.com/photos/quizz/page8/

We All Have a Mission

In the “Mother Teresa of Calcutta” movie, Anna, who came to India to live with the Sisters of Mercy but contacted MS, is sent home for medical care and to pray for their mission and set up a network of prayer. Anna is distraught over having to leave. Mother reminds her that her prayers are at least as important as their work in the streets. A later scene in the movie, when things are going really “bad” for the Sisters, Mother calls Anna, who’s sitting in wheelchair in London, and asks her and the network to “storm Heaven with your prayers.” ~jpc

A profound mission can be had in any situation. Namaste.

image: David Gayes Pathways Awareness Foundation

The Thin Veil

We have become a culture that fears the darkness. . . . In the Benedictine tradition, monks and nuns arise at about 3 a.m. for Vigils – prayer that takes place when the earth is shrouded in darkness and silence. These enduring voices in chant join with the hoot of the owls and the coyote’s distant cry. It is said that in these dark and tranquil hours the veil between heaven and earth, between consciousness and unconsciousness, is thin. ~Lisa Whitlow, “Soul Tending” winter newsletter, www.soultend.com, via Donna Ziegenhorn

All have experienced those moments when the veil is thin. I have a friend who drove a big UPS truck interstate overnight. Over the years, he experienced the thin veil as he drove through the Blue Ridge Mountains at those hours. Now he’s a poet. ~jpc

So what's behind the veil? Namaste.

image: Peter Bowers' “Drifting Away” http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_fabulous/2122007131/

"The Candidates: Faith and Values"

“The Candidates: Faith and Values” in The Christian Science Monitor online newspaper http://www.csmonitor.com/specials/primaries08/

I have read some of these four-online-page articles about the leading candidates running for US President in 2008. The articles are objective and informative about the faith journey of the candidates. Worth reading. At least read the articles on the leading candidates. ~jpc

What's Possible

The experiential recognition of what’s possible – the glory of it, the significance of it, the sense of meaning and purpose – should be what’s compelling us. Only there will we find the conviction and passion to catalyze the kind of transformation that is so desperately needed. ~Andrew Cohen, from Quote of the Week, 1/7/08

This is what is energizing 2008. For example, articulating the possibility of uniting the USA again for its great care and responsibility is energizing its election campaign. ~jpc

O to be agents of possibility. Namaste.

image www.infolink.com.au/.../166157

Present Moment Too Heavy

Jesus doesn’t fire off into the ozone in his ministry. . . . One of our monks, Bonnie Spencer, speculated that [the] teaching that the kingdom of God is now is too heavy for us. So we fire Jesus off into the second coming. Or we make up the ascension. We may even make up the resurrection. Because the present moment is too heavy. It requires too much awareness. And monasticism, whether it’s Buddhist or Christian, has always been focused on the present moment. That’s what makes our life both a joy and so difficult, because it takes so much energy to remain conscious; it takes so much energy to be aware. ~Brother Timothy, monk of Mariya uMama weThemba Monastery, “Then It’s Just the Fireworks,” Heaven, pp. 138-39

These monks (one of whom is my godson, Brother John) and so many others have demonstrated that we can be more conscious and aware in the heavy present moment. ~jpc

It is possible. Namaste.

image: the brothers of Mariya uMama http://www.umaria.co.za/ (Bro. Timothy, front right-center; Bro. John, front left-center)

The Real Enemy

In an era that glorifies independence . . . we are shy of admitting the awful truth: that is, we are dependent on each other. . . . The enemy [of us in the city] is the absence of civic communion, . . . our inability to see cohabitation as that place where we enjoy ourselves by enjoying others. . . . [T]o reverence each other means that we will have to discover each other. ~Pier Giorgio DiCicco, Toronto’s Poet Laureate, speech at the Walk21 conference, October 2007 http://spacing.ca/wire/?p=2557 (via JPC II)

DiCicco is talking about the ecological issue from the city perspective, but he also hits the planetary nail on the head: we as the earth community are one and must face our fundamental challenge of practical reverence for each other and communion with each other. ~jpc

Namaste.

image: Campus Martius Park, Detroit http://tinyurl.com/3c7472 at http://www.pps.org/parks_plazas_squares/

Sunday Dialogue LXXXV

Journer: What motivates you to love?

Nez: That’s easy. My student* said, “Those who are the hardest to love need it the most.”

Journer: It’s easy because most people are hard to love?

Nez: Right, if your life is about responding to great need . . . and more than just human need. There’s a whole world to love.

______
* Socrates (Nick Nolte) in “Peaceful Warrior”

image: Patricia Carroll's art card "Frolicking Whales" www.ascentaspirations.ca/cards.htm

Why We Say "Namaste"

In the faith which is “God’s marriage to the soul,” you are one in God, and God is wholly in you, just as, for you, He [sic] is wholly in all you meet. ~Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. 165

Or spirit is in you and all you meet. This is why we bow and say “Namaste.” ~jpc

Namaste.

image: "Namaste" sellingstupid.wordpress.com/category/exercise/

"Thank God for Evolution"

Have read the new book Thank God for Evolution! by Michael Dowd. In its second printing already. Highly recommend it. Watch the trailer! ~jpc

As news of global warming and global warring dominates the headlines, we believe that nothing matters more at this crucial crossroads in human history than accepting evolution as a fact of life. Reality is teaching us that it's not just what we believe that matters, it's how we choose to evolve. A sacred evolutionary worldview offers a way for people to make peace with themselves, each other, and the planet, and no gift could be greater than that right now. ~Michael Dowd

"Infinite Eyes"

I don’t know what’s out there

way behind the sun;

I got a feelin’

that we’re not the only one.

I can see miracles
happnin’ all the time;

I can see eternity
through infinite eyes.

~Keb’ Mo’ – “Infinite Eyes” (listen http://tinyurl.com/2jhtyp) via Bill & Marianna Bailey

This song (often sung at Jubilee Community in Asheville, NC) tells it the way it is: miracles are happening all the time when seen through infinite eyes. ~jpc

Namaste.

image: www.worldvoidweb.com/blog/?p=8

Transparent Means

You will know Life and be acknowledged by it according to your degree of transparency, your capacity, that is, to vanish as an end, and remain purely as a means. ~Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. 156

Over the holidays, we saw the DVD movie Mother Teresa (portrayed brilliantly by Olivia Hussey) with our twelve- and nine-year-old grandchildren. Mother Teresa was transparent to Life. Even in her long dark night, when she experienced being without faith, she was faithful, for she understood she was called to be a means. ~jpc

Namaste.

image: Olivia Hussey in the film http://tinyurl.com/2s2yq2

Radiance and Wonder Live

God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity, but we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder, the source of which is beyond all reason. ~Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. 56

“A personal deity” may be dead to us, but the spirit we discern in radiance and wonder lives. ~jpc

We need never cease to live. Namaste.

image: Susan Kennedy photo, Rocky Mount, Missouri www.mo.gov/mo/moweather7.htm

Past Year-New Year Reflection

Before starting, review your written reflections of a year ago. Then contemplate images of 2007, maybe at http://tinyurl.com/2pzhxv (scroll down to Reuters’ 100+ "Pictures of the Year 2007"). Using the lists below, reflect in your journal or computer file, whatever you can review next year. (Some questions for 2007 come via Jim Wiegel and Jaimie Leopold.) Happy New Year! ~jpc

2007 – Where I’ve been . . .

5 planetary events of the past year
10 events I participated in (maybe by months)
5 people I remember (beyond family or friends)
5 places I visited, near and far
5 books/poems/articles
5 movies/TV shows/plays/sport events

My favorite belly laugh of 2007 . . .
Experienced hope because of . . .
Experienced darkness and despair in the midst of . . .
Shouted with rage about . . .
Wept over . . .
Danced with joy over . . .
Stood with conviction in the midst of . . .

Key personal event
Key family event of the past year
Key community event
Key personal struggle
Key personal creation

The journey of the past year has been like
What was really going on with me this past year
The meaning of 2007 is
My name for the past year: The Great Year of ________________

2008 – What I intend . . .

Who I am going into 2008
My greatest need
3 things I’m focused on beyond self
My prayer for the earth community
3 things I intend to participate in

You must do the thing you think you cannot do. ~Eleanor Roosevelt
During the new year that “thing” is _____________________

For all that has been – Thanks! / To all that shall be – Yes!
~Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, p. 89

Namaste.