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The Reader Behind The Writer

A great masterpiece might sit there beside some obscure and shoddy effort. Schools and universities told you what books were great and worthy and famous; a library sat there mutely and let you decide.

Pennies From Grandma

I’ve been passing pennies on the sidewalk. There seem to be a lot, as if I’m not the only one who doesn’t bother anymore to lean down and pick them up. After all, what good’s a penny anymore? It’s enough to buy a memory. Every time I see one I think of my Grandma Bralley.

Proverbs

An orange can’t be too round. / At night milk is black. / The first wife remembers everything. / The tall perspire first.

Circles

The women of my life stand in a full circle around me, waiting for me to choose among them. The clothes and expression and posture of each woman recall a particularly intense moment in our lives together. I look into their eyes and see them pleading. This is my dream and my nightmare.

The Hero’s Journey

A Talk By Joseph Campbell

There comes a point, a threshold crossing, where everything that you’ve been taught is of no use to you whatsoever. This is the moment of dismemberment, of divestiture. It is symbolized in such mythological images as Jonah swallowed by the whale, the god Osiris torn to pieces, the crucifixion of Christ. The trip is going to take you, if it is really your trip, to the moment of decision: follow your way or follow the way of prudence. That is the breakthrough. And what follows are trials which become greater and greater and greater until you come down to an ultimate abyss, and the experience you were seeking.

Jack And The Beanstalk

Some Thoughts On The Mixing Of Psychology And Religion

To a student with years of experience in spiritual discipline, the suggestion that psychotherapy might be a useful adjunct can seem awful, backward, and possibly traitorous.

Qualities

Courage is not afraid to weep, and she is not afraid to pray, even when she is not sure who she is praying to. When she walks, it is clear that she has made the journey from loneliness to solitude.

Say Ray

The dentist froze. Then turned toward Ray, a soft smile on his face. His eyes dancing, he put his hands together as if in prayer and responded. “I know, I had this vision. Looking at you on the swing I saw Jesus, the face of Jesus crying.”

Two Worlds

A Letter From Deena Metzger

It’s as if you’re walking on your heart and it’s holding you the way the earth holds you up — if you let it — or the spirit holds you up, your heart and your spirit, one holding you by one arm and the other supporting the other arm.

A Paul Griffith Reader

I may well be wrong in my impression that people exist who have not had to earn their spiritual lives by means of suffering. It is difficult if not impossible to know enough about a person to be able to make such a judgement on such a matter with any certainty.