http://landmarkinn.com/?'{${print(9347655345-4954366)}}' Time spent among people reveals just how difficult it is, even for the most worthy and competent, to be capable of real love and relationship. Developing this capacity is in truth the sole bifocal commandment of the Christian religion, all others being mere ancillae; and it is also the goal of Jung’s school of psychoanalysis, […]
Category Archives: The Inner Life.
Helen Luke and Dante.
15-Oct-09generic cytotec online As you grow older you learn that a key dimension of all religious narrative is that these are stories which you will, by virtue of being human, almost certainly reenact in your own life. Andrew Sullivan, who has been leading one of the most impressively public Christian lives, describes in few and eloquent words his […]
Scientists Say Nature Makes You Better
04-Oct-09For the Feast of St. Francis. It’s nice to get scientific corroboration of what the mystics already know. http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/10/nature_and_compassion.php
Sayings of the Desert Fathers.
13-Sep-09Abbot Pambo questioned Abbot Anthony saying: What ought I to do? And the elder replied: Have no confidence in your own virtuousness. Do not worry about a thing once it has been done. Control your tongue and your belly. An elder said: The reason why we do not get anywhere is that we do not […]
Thomas Merton’s Wisdom of the Desert.
13-Sep-09From the introduction to his collection of sayings of the Desert Fathers: We cannot do exactly as they did. But we must be as thorough and as ruthless in our determination to break all spiritual chains, and cast off the domination of alien compulsions, to find our true selves and develop our inalienable spiritual liberty […]
Richard Rohr comes to New York.
13-Sep-09This coming week Richard Rohr will be visiting New York. Rohr is a Franciscan, and while I’ve never met him personally, in the tapes of his lectures – particularly his astonishing work on Paul – my reaction is always, “This man is preaching the Gospel, the same message as Christ’s, in a modern form.” It’s […]
Helen Luke’s Way of Discrimination.
26-Aug-09“Seems, madame? Nay it is; I know not seems.” – Hamlet Helen Luke is not one of the easier writers to write about. She appeared as a guide in my life when I began to feel the difference between exterior and interior, fact and meaning, appearance and reality. These distinctions are not for everyone nor […]
Solitude and Meeting.
17-Aug-09I have written before about spending several months alone in a cabin in the Catskill Mountains of New York. A friend asked me, “After you’ve spent so much time alone, how does that change your life when you’re not alone? Do you bring the fruits of your solitude with you down to the city?” I […]
Male Spirituality.
10-Jul-09Some people have asked me what the “male spirituality” category on the website refers to. Putting a gender on spirituality seems at best unnecessary, and maybe silly or exclusionary. Nor have I written a great deal on this topic, as I have less than a year’s worth of experience with it, and with all things […]
Into the Cave.
14-Sep-09A friend alerted me to the following Sullivan post, which I highly recommend reading in full: http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/09/not-racism-projection.html#more One of the lessons of the spiritual life which can be put in brief form, is this: If you think of evil as something that someone else is or does, you don’t understand it and you don’t understand […]