GRATITUDE: the practice of reckoning
Humanist Haiku Manifested true Into people together, Unified, transformed —Jocelyn Stein
Read MorePROMISES: the practice of creating the world
Random or Divine? by Don Lifto Fifteen billion years. Big Bang regurgitation. Random or divine? The meditative song, “Where Do We Come From?” is based on an oil painting by French artist, Paul Gauguin. It chants three fundamental questions about the universe: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? These three questions are framed in the reproduction of Gauguin’s painting below. The artist encourages us to interpret the painting from right to left. The three women and child on the right of the painting symbolize the beginning of life. The middle section represents...
Read MoreSOULWORK: the practice of centering
The practice of Zen is forgetting the self in the act of uniting with something. – Koun Yamada Life isn’t as serious as the mind makes it out to be. – Eckhart Tolle Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine. – Shunryu Suzuki
Read MoreDISRUPTION: the practice of being fully present
Rebel Although it has been years, in autumn, when the sumac firelights the roadsides filling the air, not with smoke but with clarity, I am on the farm again. I breathe the warm snorting smell of his blackness, grip him tight with legs and hands as we cross the fields with the speed of geese in flight. The fields are black, too, ready for winter to etch their clods with frost, stiffening them like Lot’s wife. But I do not look back, for I am fifteen and ready. I match my rhythm to his, fast walk, trot and then– In one enormous exhalation– we are stretching out, beyond the farm,...
Read MoreHOSPITALITY: the practice of belonging
Belonging by Don Lifto Enveloped in love; grounded like roots of an oak. Holding fast to life. Feeling alone at times is a shared human experience. Sometimes aloneness is simply being lonesome, longing for company and the satisfaction of togetherness with family or a friend. On some days feeling alone is occasioned by fear and a realization that a problem or situation must be confronted by yourself or a sense that no one can hear your plea for help. Alone can also take on the form of desperation or depression when life’s circumstances feel overwhelmingly crushing in their intensity or...
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