A Mindful Life

Last week over lunch with David Nunez (a local technology advocate and robotic multimedia artist), the topic of personality tests came up. Personality theory is an interest of mine, and I idly commented to him that I might write a post about it. As I continue reading The Stone Diaries (a novelistic study in personality [...]

It has never been easy for me to understand the obliteration of time, to accept, as others seem to do, the swelling and corresponding shrinkage of seasons or the conscious acceptance that one year has ended and another begun. There is something here that speaks of our essential helplessness and how the greater substance of [...]

This new title — American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon — looks to be interesting. It’s an account of the many views humanity has had to Jesus, from superhuman to moral man, and how these perpectives have influenced culture. From the excerpt of the book review by R. Scott Appleby [...]

I found this meditation by Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, a Sufi, to be thought-provoking: It is the awakening of the soul which is mentioned in the Bible: unless the soul is born again it will not enter into the kingdom of heaven. For the soul to be born again means that it is awakened after [...]

The charity that begins at home cannot rest there but draws one inexorably over the threshold and off the porch and down the street and so out and out and out and out into the world which becomes the home wherein charity begins until it becomes possible, in theory at least, to love the whole [...]

These days more people are working in lower-paying jobs without medical benefits or paid vacation and sick time. There are many who, despite being a two-income household, encounter the unexpected expense that they can’t easily cover; there are single-income households with children, and one financial mishap can be disastrous. The car breaks down and needs [...]

The New York Times briefly reported the findings of a study which examines the effectiveness of therapy and medication on depression. The cognitive therapy provided for the patients aimed to reduce depression by teaching them to recognize and derail negative habits of thought. The study’s senior author, Dr. Helen Mayberg of the Rotman Research Institute [...]

Manners indeed are like the cypher in arithmetic — they may not be much in themselves, but they are capable of adding a great deal to the value of everything else. –Freya Stark, East Is West (1945)

I’ve been taking more walks around the neighborhood in the past few months, and I’ve noticed something: children and teens will pass within two feet of an adult and not acknowledge the adult. They will only say hello if spoken to, and it’s an offhanded greeting at that. So I’ve been asking myself: was I [...]

To want to be what one can be is purpose in life. –Cynthia Ozick, Trust (1966)