Meditations

For nearly three years, pundits in the mainstream media have mused and amused themselves with the question: What will this incompetent, chaos-generating president do when he is confronted with a…

A fellow in Salem, Oregon came to my attention lately while talking with people in that capital city. He writes a personal blog variously called “Hinesight” or “Church of the…

I’ve given precedence to direct experiencing of the numinous since I was 18 and had an explosive insight that changed the course of my life. Over the years, many strange…

The most exquisitely graceful phenomenon I’ve ever seen in nature is the flight of a hovering kite falling gently to earth from 100 meters above the fields. Unlike its distant…

Questions regarding the nature of the observer have been arising from readers and in dialogue. For example, a reader asks: “Is the observer the origin of suffering?” We have to…

A late afternoon thunderstorm yesterday gave way to clouds and cool temperatures today. The sun shone enough in the afternoon however, to invite a long meditation beside the stream. On…

The strictest monks in Catholicism are “Cistercians of the Strict Observance,” usually known as Trappists. They pray six times a day, beginning at 3:30 a.m. Thomas Merton was a Trappist,…

It’s near dusk, and the parkland is teeming with Cooper’s hawks. One of the large, brown, stipple-winged raptors takes off from the path ahead of me with some small animal…