Many people from traditional Christian backgrounds may find this shocking and offensive… that is understandable…for other people, it will feel like a palmful of cold water on your face when you wake up in the morning. This is how Stephen Mitchell begins his book Jesus,What He Really Said and Didand you might be wondering—what did Mitchell do to offend some and wake up others? Well, he dared to reinterpret the story of Jesus as told in the Bible, retranslating passages... Read more
What if what you’ve been chasing all these years has been in you all along, waiting for the chance to be loved into existence? ~Andrea Balt I recently heard the Care of the Soul author Thomas Moore being interviewed by Oprah where he revealed he no longer was “seeking.” After a lifetime of intensive spiritual study, including authoring over a dozen books on the soul, Moore said he had discovered all that he needed to know. No more seeking, just finding.... Read more
Do you consider yourself “spiritual, but not religious?” If you’re like most Wake Up Call readers, you just answered yes. And if that’s the case, you may have a problem. You see, those of us who have left the world of organized religion (or were never a part of it in the first place), still have a deep-seeded yearning. We want to/need to satiate the spiritual side of ourselves and if we don’t, we start feeling unsettled and discontented, as... Read more
I once read a story that asked a singer/performer, Bonnie Raitt I think, “What was the best piece of advice you ever received?” Her response consisted of a single word: “Breathe” The songstress had been given this tip from her father who had pointed out that when we’re stressed or feeling a little bit tense, we tend to shorten our breath. And at those moments, there’s nothing better we can do to steady ourselves than take a big, deep gulp... Read more
When this story first ran almost 4 years ago, it became a bit controversial–let’s just say the atheists weren’t happy. On this most American of holiday weeks, I thought it was high time to run it again. Mark Twain, famed humorist and writer of the classics The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, is perhaps the most celebrated American author of all time. He is also a favorite of atheists and atheist Web sites, who claim... Read more
A few years ago, there was an article in Rolling Stone titled “Being Bill Murray.” It told the story of how the now 67-year old actor has a habit of engaging in sometimes mischievous, often beguiling public acts. For instance, there’s the time he stopped to read poetry to a group of construction workers in New York City. Or the tale of how, while in a cab in San Francisco, he engaged the driver in conversation and found out he... Read more
There’s a Pew Research Center study that came out earlier this year that showed an increasing number of Americans no longer believe in God. That may come as no surprise—but what might surprise you is just how many do still believe, if not in God, in some other spiritual force or supreme being. The numbers look like this: 56% of Americans said they believe in God “as described in the Bible” 34% of Americans say they DON’T believe in the God... Read more
In Meaningful Work, A Quest to do Great Business, Find Your Calling and Feed Your Soul, entrepreneur Shawn Askinosie tells us how he left a soul-killing job as a lawyer and found his true calling, starting Askinosie Chocolate. No ordinary chocolatier, the company sources 100% of its cocoa beans directly from farmers around the globe. (I sampled a bar of chocolate sourced from Tanzania and it was heavenly.) While Shawn offers valuable lessons in starting a Fair Trade business, and... Read more
This month marks the two-year anniversary of the passing of my friend John Gray, and two years since this story was first published. I am rerunning this column again because I believe his wise words, and his unique take on life, are worth repeating. I first met John Gray in early-2014. He was a reader of this column and we began a regular exchange of ideas via e-mail. I soon found myself collecting some of his choicest sayings and, to his... Read more
When we look at our lives, we often tend to view them as broken into 3 distinct phases: School, Work and Retirement. But these days, when our jobs have become more fluid, when the delineation line between work and retirement is often hazy, these terms seem to come up short. That’s why when I saw the following list in Thomas Moore’s recent book Ageless Soul, I thought, finally—here’s a guide that more accurately describes the phases of life as it... Read more
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