Tag: Philosophy

Posted on

All creation bears the footprint

Francis contemplated the footprints of God impressed on the things of creation, and he found God wherever he went in the world. As he experienced divine love within himself, so too he saw that same love throughout creation—in birds, trees, clouds, rabbits, even wolves. The world was the self-revealed gift of God, created to lead humans to what it signified, a deep, personal unity in love. Contemplation of the world was indistinguishable from the contemplation of God.”

— Making All Things New: Catholicity, Cosmology, Consciousness by Ilia Delio

Francis saw no dichotomy but saw the world as one. For too long Western philosophy and religion as seen the exploitation of the planet somehow disconnected from our spirituality. I don’t think that can continue in the post pandemic world. This is our common home and if we expect to live long and prosper we must take care of it along with each other.

Posted on

Spirituality

“Spirituality is not about feeling good about ourselves. It’s about doing good wherever we are. It’s about bringing good to everyone. It’s about becoming the good we seek. It’s about fashioning our souls in the kind of silence that enables the whole world to feel safe in our calm and quiet presence.”

— Radical Spirit: 12 Ways to Live a Free and Authentic Life by Joan Chittister

Spirituality is at the heart of good relationships. When folks think of spirituality they think there’s a connection to religion. There can be but it’s not always a given. I’ll always be more at home with the spiritual than the religious. Dogma, doctrine and rote aren’t for me.

Posted on

The prophetic call

“The prophets of our era lament the lack of religion’s concern for underpaid women, trafficked girls, beaten wives, and the miserable second-classism of women everywhere—in both church and state. Today’s prophets try to deter the ruthless, relentless, systemic violence practiced in the name of patriotism, calling itself “the Will of God.” The prophets understand why spiritual seekers cry out in despair for church leadership in the condemnation of nuclear weapons but get condemnations of condoms and contraception instead.”

— The Time Is Now: A Call to Uncommon Courage by Joan Chittister

Posted on

Open

Today I was reading Shipwrecked in South Carolina’s “Already Broken.” I’d been thinking about what it means to be open before, but James got me focused again. Openness is a concept which is not expressed much in education, at least I don’t remember my teachers ever directly speaking about the necessity of an open mind, but in fact there can be no learning without it. We are surrounded by openness and upon reflection it doesn’t take much thought to realize that without openness nothing could really exist. A milk glass would be of no use without an opening to hold the milk. A home would have no value without empty spaces in which to live. Autos, trains, planes all require openings and open space for utility. Walls and bulkheads are useful too, but it is the openings and openness which invite us in.

Last week one of my Facebook friends posted a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Every wall is a door.” I hadn’t thought of that at all but a simple quote and an open mind helps me to see that where I might have turned back is actually an invitation to move forward.

Posted on

Listen to the rain

A couple of nights ago I woke up to the sound of rain and I thought of Thomas Merton. Whenever it rains I think of Merton.

I came up here [to his hermitage] from the monastery last night, sloshing through the cornfield, said Vespers, and put some oatmeal on the Coleman stove for supper. It boiled over while I was listening to the rain and toasting a piece of bread at the log fire. The night became very dark. The rain surrounded the whole cabin with its enormous virginal myth, a whole world of meaning, of secrecy, of silence, of rumor. Think of it: all that speech pouring down, selling nothing, judging nobody, drenching the thick mulch of dead leaves, soaking the trees, filling the gullies and crannies of the wood with water, washing out the places where men have stripped the hillside! What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!
Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, this rain. As long as it talks I am going to listen.–Thomas Merton. “Rain and the Rhinocerous” in Raids on the Unspeakable. New York: New Directions Publishing Co., 1964: 9-10.

Posted on

Happy Birthday Jelaluddin Rumi

Today while visiting Brother David’s website that this is the birthday of Jelaluddin Rumi. Rumi was a mystic and I first learned of him a few years ago watching Dr. Wayne Dyer on Public Television.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.

Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

— Jelaluddin Rumi,

Posted on

What’s going on..?

As we ramp up to yet another war. Here is one of my favorite ballads by one of the greatest voices in Motown history. Suppose they gave a war and no one came. Imagine the day when universal health care is fully funded and the Pentagon has to hold bake sales to build bombs.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJ35qNXmRJE]