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Spirituality
Beyond Belief
The first instruction was “Find a quiet place.” I went to Inwood Park and seated myself on a large rock, legs crossed, eyes closed. Immediately an airplane flew overhead. I stood up, walked a hundred yards deeper into the park, sat beside a tree, and again closed my eyes. This time I heard traffic from the Henry Hudson Parkway. Over and over I sat down, each time encountering a new distraction. Defeated, I walked home.
September 2014
excerpted from
The Practice Of The Wild
The pathless world of wild nature is a surpassing school and those who have lived through her can be tough and funny teachers.
August 2014
In The Quiet Room
There is nothing to remember. Pale flesh and coarse, dark hair and a mountain of a belly. Hands that lingered too long. A weight that wouldn’t move. No, nothing to remember.
May 2014
My Father’s Lesson
I picture him standing in the church superintendent’s office, / the grim man threatening to fire my father from his pastorship / in the small town of Live Oak if he continued to attend / the interdenominational prayer group that spoke in tongues.
February 2014Beginner’s Mind
Sy Safransky On God, LSD, And The Magazine He Founded
The Sun has always been bigger than me. Wiser than me. Steadier than me. One of the satisfactions of publishing it for all these years is that I’ve gotten to see what happens when like-minded people work together toward a common goal.
January 2014
excerpted from
Still Here
Recently, a friend said to me, “You’re more human since the stroke than you were before.” This touched me profoundly. What a gift the stroke has given me, to finally learn that I don’t have to renounce my humanity in order to be spiritual — that I can be both witness and participant, both eternal spirit and aging body.
January 2014Sisterhood
Sister Louise Akers Challenges The Church Patriarchy
The writings of the Church fathers take a misogynistic view of women. Saint Jerome, for example, said that women are a “pathway to hell,” and Saint Augustine viewed women as intellectually inferior and as a moral threat to men. This view of women was consistent through the Middle Ages, when Thomas Aquinas wrote in Summa Theologica that women are “misbegotten males.”
November 2013
excerpted from
The Color Purple
But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can’t miss it.
November 2013Sunbeams
October 2013They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse.
Selected Poems
— from “With That Moon Language” | Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to / them, “Love me.” / Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise / someone would call the cops.
October 2013
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