Another bad thing in a world of bad things. I have not become numb, that is not what has happened. I crumble with each new attack, with each new assault – foreign or domestic. And then I disconnect, and block out the media, and become absorbed in my kids’ interests and the activities we can do…
Category: Soul Candy
Easy, Now, Grasshopper!
It’s Tao Tuesday! As always, I will refer you back to the original page, Tao te Ching Daily, and her series, Tao Tuesday. There, you will find rich discussion and articles from every chapter of the Tao, spanning I think a couple of years. I’m just starting over here, and relishing the discipline of looking…
Grey in the Greyness of Dawn
“Slowly, almost hesitatingly, the train moved on as if it wanted to spare its passengers the dreadful realization as long as possible: Auschwitz!”With the progressive dawn, the outlines of an immense camp became visible: long stretches of several rows of barbed wire fences; watch towers; searchlights; and long columns of ragged human figures, grey in…
Darkness within Darkness
Reflections on The Tao te Ching – Chapter 1: The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao. The name that can be named is not the eternal Name. The unnamable is the eternally real. Naming is the origin of all particular things. Free from desire, you realize the mystery….
The Vanishing Point where Stillness Bellows
First there was a quiet that was deafening. My heart was washed of all the years of torment and bitterness, in an afternoon. Just gone. Daily anger, frustration, strife, vexation. Poof. And what remained echoed in its shiny cleanness. For a couple of days, that roared in my head, or maybe hummed. My thoughts…
Roaring Quiet of an Open Space
How incredibly odd. My mind is still. I have been in constant conflict for so long, I don’t know what to do with a settled, contentedness. I will learn. For so long, there was always at the back of my mind a battle raging. There was so much love, and yet so much disappointment…
Maybe I was Never a Heathen After All
“You know how sometimes you have a fight with me in your head, and I don’t know anything about it,” my husband asked me this morning. “What if that’s what you have going with ‘The Church’ – what if you are mad at them, but they aren’t even in it, and they’re not mad at you…
Stillness Shrinks Us to Our Own Size
There are three kinds of silence. the first is physical, the silence of the outer world. This quiet world is a precondition for the second silence which is spiritual, the silence of the mind. Which mind, purged of distractions, prepares one for the third silence, the silence of mystical meditation. “When thought stops, words…
The Sustenance of the Psyche
My father told me when I was young that “Thoughts untangle themselves when they cross our lips or pencil tips.” We develop as humans when we discuss ideas with others, or when we wrestle them out on paper. When we are in dialogue – either with others or internally – we learn and grow and…
Mystics Hear Voices
Mystics hear voices. the question “Do you hear voices?” is used to sort the sane from the insane. And yet, as artists, we do hear voices and most insistently when we seek the guidance for our art. We are led. We are prompted. We are urged. We are called. ~ Julia Cameron, from The Complete…
