A Mindful Life

I wish my blog were famous and had millions of readers so this video could reach many, many people. If the video doesn’t show/play then click to watch it here. I’ve not read any of David Foster Wallace’s books, but hearing this speech I can’t help but wish he was still alive.

Analysis has its peculiar scientific value, but the Spirit which passes from one person to another as a flame leaps from one coal to another grasps truth in its wholeness as a living thing united within itself. …Spiritual truth cannot be sharply defined like scientific truth. It exists on the dim edge of the unexplored [...]

No Ordinary Life Drink some coffee light a candle Rain patters light a candle Cat purrs light a candle A child’s party light a candle Eat cake light a candle Buy groceries light a candle Fold laundry light a candle Clean the bathroom light a candle Pay bills light a candle Read books light a [...]

Lately I’ve been hearing two Tracy Chapman songs on an endless loop in my head. So I’m sharing. Turn the volume up and take the ten minutes listen, really listen. Embed not working: Try this. Embed not functioning? Try this.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. This insight into the mystery of [...]

When we’re young we have faith in what is seen, but when we’re old we know that what is seen is traced in air and built on water. –Maxwell Anderson, Winterset

In asserting: God* exists, we merely bring down overpowering reality to the level of thought. Our belief is but an afterthought. The transition from obliviousness to an awareness of God, is not a leap over a missing link in a syllogism but a retreat, giving up premises rather than adding one. –Abraham Joshua Heschel *or [...]

One ought to enter old age the way one enters the senior year at a university, in exciting anticipation of consummation. Rich in perspective, experienced in failure, the person advanced in years is capable of shedding prejudices and the fever of vested interests. He does not see anymore in every fellow man a person who [...]

Awe is an intuition for the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme. Awe is a sense for the transcendence, for the reference everywhere to mystery beyond all things. It enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the [...]

Old age is something we are all anxious to attain. However, once attained we consider it a defeat, a form of capital punishment. In enabling us to reach old age, medical science may think is has given us a blessing; however, we continue to act as if it were a disease. More money and time [...]