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.

…over the margins of life comes a whisper, a faint call, a premonition of richer living which we know we are passing by. Strained by the very mad pace of our daily outer burdens, we are further strained by an inward uneasiness, because we have hints that there is a way of life vastly richer [...]

THE AFTERLIFE They’re moving off in all imaginable directions, each according to his own private belief, and this is the secret that silent Lazarus would not reveal: that everyone is right, as it turns out. you go to the place you always thought you would go, the place you kept lit in an alcove in [...]

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom. That is being educated, and understanding how to think. The alternative is unconsciousness, the default [...]

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.

God pours life into death and death into life without a drop being spilled. -Author Unknown Until I attended graduate school at St. Edward’s University, I didn’t know much about Dia de los Muertos. In 1997, after I’d left the fundamentalist non-denominational church I’d been with for years — and with it my entire social [...]

The first time I heard this spoken-word passage, I was so moved I had to pull off the road and cry. It was a few months after 9/11. It resonates with me still. If you have a few minutes, maybe if you listen it will speak to you too. If the embed isn’t working you [...]

At least ten years ago my mother gave me a magnetic notepaper holder to hang on my refrigerator. It had a delicate angel and rainbow picture, with a saying about love on it. For a long time I’ve realized it doesn’t appeal to me anymore. Lately my hands have been feeling restless and unsettled. Tonight [...]

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 [...]

I happened across a post on Deepak Chopra’s website where someone asked why we are given the parents we have. Putting aside the knowledge that the question “why” is a sticky, tangly, distracting web, (it doesn’t really free a person, it simply looks for a place to park blame — on oneself or another — [...]