A Mindful Life

People commit suicide for only one reason — to escape torment. –Li Ang, The Butcher’s Wife (1983)

Having lunch with a colleague today, the talk veered toward Iraq and our country’s involvement. He mentioned that at least 17 American troops have committed suicide since April. He’d heard it on television news, so I did a Google news search. The only report as of the time of this post was published by Utusan [...]

As anyone with a speech or hearing disability can tell you, listening is not always auditory communication. –Hannah Merker, Listening (1994)

Brain imaging research indicates there are both structural and chemical differences in male and female brains which may provide clues on why men are less verbal and women usually more so. From The Mind of a Man – Trustworthy, Physician-Reviewed Information from WebMD: “When he sprawls on the couch with the remote at the end [...]

Because the face is so changeable, I’ve chosen several quotes. She could imagine his expression… anxiety and annoyance chasing each other like the hands of a clock around his wide, flat face. –Helen Hudson, Meyer Meyer (1967) Nothing ruins a face so fast as double-dealing. Your face telling one story to the world. Your heart [...]

Yesterday I was under the weather and spent much of the day resting or sleeping. I arose today feeling much better, more here, more awake. This led me to ponder the process of awakening, and the state of being awake. It is on the playground of the poet, especially the mystic, that this concept has [...]

As reported at Beliefnet.com: It is important, he said, to recognize that depression can be a response to messages of the media that “exalt consumerism, the immediate satisfaction of desires and the race to an ever better material well-being.” Depressed people need to regain “self esteem, faith in their own capacity, interest in the future [...]

Each sentence must have, at its heart, a little spark of fire, and this, whatever the risk, the novelist must pluck with his own hands from the blaze. –Virginia Woolf, “Life and the Novelist,” The Common Reader, 1st series (1925)

We are now mid-way through National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, as it is known among participants. I know several people who are putting themselve through their paces with this task. I came across interesting commentary in the Las Vegas Mercury, titled Hurry up and write and written by Tod Goldberg. He is not a [...]

The religious need of the human mind remains alive, never more so, but it demands a teaching which can be understood. Slowly an apprehension of the intimate, usable power of God is growing among us, and a growing recognition of the only worth-while application of that power — in the improvement of the world. –Charlotte [...]