Eyes Wide Open: Meditating While Walking

October 20, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

When you think of meditation, what image comes to mind? You might picture a person sitting cross-legged on the floor or nestled in a comfortable chair, eyes closed, oblivious to their surroundings. But there’s a technique that takes a very different approach to meditation—because it involves movement and keeping your eyes wide open. I’m talking about walking meditation. On the Waking Up app, host Sam Harris discusses the two different types of walking practices. One is the super-slow walk, where… Read more

The Rich Spiritual Life of 2 NFL-players with ALS

October 13, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

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The next time you’re feeling sorry for yourself—maybe you’ve had a bad day at work or an argument with your spouse or you’re feeling the aches and pains of aging—you might want to remember this story. It’s about 2 men facing the kind of adversity you and I can only imagine and how they not only overcome it but thrive in spite of it. Steve Gleason and Tim Green are former NFL players who by football standards had long careers,… Read more

What is Aging Asking of You?

October 6, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

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As we grow older, we also grow more spiritual. At least that has been my personal experience. Now that I can count the time to retirement in months rather than years, I find myself yearning to deepen my spiritual practice. I look forward to having more time for contemplation, centering prayer, spiritual reading. And apparently, I am not alone. In a recent story that appeared in Canada’s Globe and Mail, Kathy Kerr writes that “retirement offers time to tend to… Read more

Are You on the Right Path in Life?

September 29, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

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The question you see above is one I ask of myself every now and then. It includes follow up questions like, what is my path? Am I on my path or have I veered off course? What, if any, course corrections do I need to make? I see these questions as part of living an examined life, ensuring I make the most of my precious time here on earth. So not coincidentally, the idea of having a path in life… Read more

What To Do When Life Goes to Sh*t

September 22, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

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Q: “I’m 61 and feeling down. Like everything is falling apart around me and I can’t fix things. Advice?” A: “Pick some part of your life that is working and focus on that.” ~David Crosby I recently found the sage advice above in an unlikely place—the Twitter feed of the now 80-year-old David Crosby of Crosby, Stills and Nash fame. The person who asked for this advice was a complete stranger, yet Crosby empathized with him and answered. It’s no… Read more

Premonitions: Messages from God or Something Stranger?

September 14, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

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Have you ever had a premonition? It’s the feeling that something good or bad is about to happen to you, often with specific details, that’s often so strong you just can’t shake it. I like to think of it as your intuition on overdrive. In the book The Power of Premonitions, Larry Dosse describes them this way: A premonition is literally a forewarning. It is a glimpse of the future, a feeling or sense that something is about to happen. They can… Read more

10 Rules for Turning Fate into Your Friend

September 9, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

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“You don’t get life right. Life gets you right.” In the book Wisdom, Apprenticing to the Unknown and Befriending Fate, Paul Dunion explains his philosophy of life. Which might best be summed up by the two sentences you see above in bold type. According to Dunion, getting things right in your life comes down to a matter of fate—and how you choose to deal with it. Until I picked up Wisdom, I had never heard of Dunion who is now… Read more

The 50 Miracles of Jesus: Fact or Fiction?

September 1, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

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In the early 1810s, a newly retired Thomas Jefferson took on a project that no one had undertaken before him. After ordering two copies of the New Testament, he took out a razor and painstakingly cut out the portions of the text he preferred. He then rearranged these passages and glued them into the pages of a blank book. The result is what Jefferson called The Philosophy of Jesus of Nazareth, though today it is better known as The Jefferson… Read more

3 New Prayers for the Spiritual but not Religious

August 25, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

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One of my most popular columns over the past few years is “3 Daily Prayers for the Spiritual but not Religious.” It appears most people are stumbling upon the story using Google search—which would seem to indicate there’s a yearning for non-traditional prayers, the kind you don’t hear in church. For me, prayer represents another tool in the spiritual toolbox. While there’s something to be said for the inner calm that can be achieved through meditation, prayer can help us connect… Read more

Are You Versed in the Fine Art of Doing Nothing?

August 18, 2021 By Tom Rapsas

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My family was recently watching the oddly entertaining miniseries White Lotus, which is set in a Hawaiian vacation “paradise.” As a still working professional, it was hard not to notice that one of the characters, a high-powered businesswoman, was regularly attending Zoom calls and checking her work email while supposedly on vacation. And all I could think was, what a mistake. I learned long ago about the need to occasionally unplug from the distractions of the world. There comes a… Read more

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