I want to know for sure if there is more to life than this meaningless materialistic world. I have been quite successful in life by almost all measures. Yet, somehow, I don’t feel fulfilled. That’s a quote from the new book Rethink God by Nadiez Bahi and it captures what many of us feel at some point in life: Is that all there is? Only Bahi doesn’t just sit back and contemplate his existential plight, he travels “the corners of... Read more
I was in a bad way. Miserable, out of my mind. There were days when I would lie in bed, drapes closed, the day outside sliding into night and back to day, and I just didn’t want to deal. Deal with my thoughts. Deal with being sick. Deal with heartache. Deal…with…life. The words above are from Kaval Ravikant and, as you might have surmised, he was in a very bad place. Not only was he physically and spiritually not well,... Read more
When you pray, what do you pray for? Do you pray for specific things to happen, say a promotion at work, the attention of a person you’re romantically interested in, or to win the Powerball lottery? Do you pray for the well-being and happiness of others, perhaps for a close friend or one of your children or grandchildren? I was thinking about the nature of prayer recently, during the final days of my father-in-law’s life. I ran into a neighbor... Read more
The American monk Thomas Merton once told a story about climbing the ladder of success. Merton pointed out that we can spend years of our lives climbing the corporate or economic ladder. Up and up and up. Only to find that when we get to the top of our ladder, it’s leaning against the wrong wall. In Falling Upward, A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Richard Rohr reminds us that our “supposed achievements” of the first half of... Read more
It’s Easter week and if you attend Christian church services in the coming days, you’ll hear the story of the resurrection of Jesus. In a nutshell, it goes like this: Jesus was crucified, died and was buried—and on the third day he rose from the dead. It’s the third day that’s worth we’re looking at, because as it turns out there are many different tales as to what happened on the day of Jesus’s resurrection. There are two variations that... Read more
Are you having a good day today? Will you have a good day tomorrow? It might be a little late to impact the day you’re currently living through, but there is a way to prepare for a better day tomorrow. It starts when you wake up and involves taking a few simple steps to get your day off to a good start. A good day starts with a good morning. You’ve heard the expression that someone “got up on the... Read more
Stoicism is an ancient Greek philosophy that dates all the way back to 300 B.C. Yet despite the fact its best known voices, Seneca the Younger and Marcus Aurelius, lived and taught around the time of Jesus Christ, it still holds great sway today. Both old and new books on stoicism, by authors like Ryan Holiday, regularly top Amazon’s best-selling philosophy book list. The stoic philosophy is based on a system of ethics that include having a set of high... Read more
We have a better capacity to be happy as we get older. That’s the finding of a report in an academic publication called Neuroscience and Behavioral Reviews, co-authored by Jamila Bookwala, a dean of psychology at Lafayette college. It of course raises the question, what is happiness? Bookwala points out that what defines happiness is unique to each individual, so my idea of happiness may differ from yours. For some people it’s defined as joy, for others contentment. One important factor: Our... Read more
Have you ever felt the presence of God in your life? For most of us, this happens in one of a few ways, usually through an event or mechanism that opens up our senses. We have a sudden awareness that there is something greater inside us and/or around us, a supreme force or energy that is the very essence of life. This trigger can be nature, the sublime feeling you get when you walk along a wooded path, gaze up through... Read more
Sometimes it takes a death to get us thinking about life. I had a very close relative pass away a few days ago, his name was John. He had seemed in okay health but after fainting a couple of times, he was taken to a local hospital. Over the ensuing days, a number of tests were conducted and he was diagnosed with a fatal illness. Less than 3 weeks later he was dead. While the death seemed sudden, I can’t... Read more
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