How much stillness do you have in your life? Stillness is defined as “a calm, quiet, motionless state.” When we achieve a state stillness, we have calmed the waters of the internal self. We’ve, at least momentarily, escaped the noise that sometimes clouds our heads and become fully immersed in the present moment. In the book Stillness is The Key (featured in a previous column), the author Ryan Holiday reminds us that we are at our best when we can achieve… Read more
If you read through the early Christian texts known as the Gnostic Gospels, you’ll find there are two primary themes that appear again and again. The first is the idea that the kingdom of God is not found in heaven but is here on Earth right now. It’s not so much a place as it is a state-of-mind. The second idea that appears several times in the Gnostic texts is in regard to the path to enlightenment—and how we get… Read more
Are you a dog person or a cat person? Most people fall into one camp or the other. I am proudly a cat person, not that it has always been that way. I started out as a dog person, but early in my adult life I was converted. My wife can take credit for that.Laney is a magnet for cats. When she is outdoors, strays have a way of finding her. Not long after we moved in together, we soon… Read more
What if we got the true message of Jesus wrong? What if his real message was hiding in plain sight, in familiar parables whose meaning we take at face value, but that contain deeper and more meaningful truths? That is one of the primary themes in Jesus, A New Vision by the bestselling author Whitley Strieber, a book that forces us to look at the life and teachings of Jesus in a fresh light. Strieber believes that “for too many… Read more
Have you ever heard of a book titled The Encounter, Amazon Beaming? It tells the story of National Geographic photographer Loren McIntyre, and how he made contact with the elusive Mayoruna (also known as Matsés) tribe in the deepest jungles of Brazil in 1969. It made McIntyre one of the first “outsiders” to ever have contact with the tribe. For the past several years, Simon McBurney has brought The Encounter story to the stage as a one-man show, including a run… Read more
I was recently watching news coverage of the horrific condominium collapse in Miami Beach. (Maybe you did, too.) A woman standing not far from the debris field had apparently lost her mother in the disaster. She made a comment that stuck with me. Through tears, she said: “I want to go back a day and change everything.” Her grief is more than understandable. Who hasn’t lost a loved one, or had something really bad happen in their life, and wished… Read more
There have been a lot of stories about UFOs in the news lately, specifically around the US government admitting that they exist. What’s much more fascinating to me though are the untold thousands of reports by those who claim to have had encounters with the occupants of those flying ships. One such witness is the author Whitley Strieber. Strieber recently published a new book titled Jesus: A New Vision. It’s a scholarly and well-researched study and Strieber has apparently been… Read more
Best known for his roles in romantic comedies, the more recent work of Matthew McConaughey has proven him to be one of the finest actors of our time. An Academy Award winner for his performance in Dallas Buyer’s Club, he’s had exceptional turns in the TV-series True Detective and in movies like Interstellar and, my personal favorite, The Gentlemen. McConaughey recently put out a quasi-autobiography titled Greenlights that talks to how he got into the movie business (almost by accident),… Read more
We would all like to think that as we get older, we get wiser. But is that really true? As I grow older myself, I can’t say that I’m getting smarter—but I am, I believe, becoming more content, more comfortable in my own skin. I’ve learned to separate the wheat from the chaff and fully realize what is important in this life and what to brush aside. I’ve also become more forgiving of myself, realizing that (in the words of… Read more
What if the higher power most of us know as God was around you all the time, a constant presence in your life? Only you didn’t take the time or make the effort to realize it? What if all it took was a little awareness on your part to discover that God was, in every moment, both in you and all around you? That’s one of the main premises that Franciscan priest and author Richard Rohr puts forth in the… Read more
