The really smart marketer Seth Godin got met thinking about mentors the other day. While I’ve always believed the spiritual path is best navigated as a solo journey, and have railed against “gurus” in the past, the word “mentor” evokes a different image for me. I picture a wise sage who, when needed, dispenses valuable advice and counsel, ensuring that the spiritual journeyer stays on course. But how do we go about finding our own spiritual mentor? According to Godin,... Read more
Earlier this year, I wrote a column titled “You’ll Dig These 6 Life Tips from The Dude” here on these Patheos pages. It featured the wisdom of the actor Jeff Bridges as told in his book The Dude and the Zen Master. The Dude is a role Bridges once played in the movie The Big Lebowski. And while he may have received an Academy Award as Best Actor for Crazy Heart, it was his performance as the chillaxed Dude that... Read more
What if I told you some of the most amazing and compelling things Jesus said during his lifetime can’t be found in the Bible? That’s because they’re part of the Gnostic Gospels, a loose collection of almost 60 early Christian texts that have been referred to as “the secret sayings of the savior”. Many of the Gnostic gospels were written in the first through third centuries, about the same time as the four gospels found in the New Testament. Once... Read more
An avowed “non-believer”, something strange happened to the movie critic Roger Ebert a week before his death: According to his wife Chaz, he visited heaven. Did you read the recent best-seller Proof of Heaven? I did and while Dr. Eban Alexander spun a good tale of his journey into a heaven-like world while lying in a coma, there was just one problem: the author had credibility issues. As detailed in a long profile and follow-up in Esquire magazine, one couldn’t walk... Read more
“If the only prayer you ever say is thank you, it will be enough.” – Meister Eckhart I first wrote about this prayer at the beginning of the year and am repeating it here because it is especially appropriate for the Thanksgiving holiday. I use it each morning to get my day off to a great start and for all its simplicity, it’s the most important, most powerful prayer I know. It’s a simple prayer of thanks and it starts... Read more
I work in New York City in the frenetic world of advertising. After a two-hour early morning commute, I usually walk into the office with a couple of tight deadlines to make, two to three meetings to attend and an average of a crisis a day to handle. I work with people who approach their jobs with the same level of intensity you might associate with brain surgery. Now I consider myself a spiritual guy and place the utmost importance... Read more
I start most mornings with some spirituality-based reading and over the past several years this has included the works of the late-John Templeton. Better known for the investment fund that bears his name, after his retirement Templeton wrote several expansive philosophy and religion books that are absolutely overflowing with spiritual wisdom. What’s compelling about Templeton’s work is that his spiritual teachings (often presented as lessons) can immediately be incorporated into your daily life. And I recently ran across a “lesson”... Read more
I work in New York City not far from the United Nations and every so often I’ll stumble across a protest aimed at one foreign government or another. One day, while taking a walk at lunch, I came upon a group of 25-30 “protestors” that was strangely silent, no chanting like you sometimes hear at these gatherings and there was barely a placard in sight. The group was mostly of Asian descent and had it not been for the steel... Read more
There is a debate going on in a Presbyterian Church near me about the future direction of the church. The senior pastor there, who I will refer to as Dan, has decided to try and steer the church onto a new path, at least partly based on the answer to this question: Is the Bible the Word of God or a Book of Wisdom? Here’s the background: the church’s elders are debating whether they should join The Fellowship of Presbyterians,... Read more
Perusing the pages of Patheos I came across an interesting article in a place I don’t often visit: the Pagan Channel. Its subject was “purpose and will” and in the post John Beckett opined that, believe it or not, we all have a purpose in life. He said this feeling came not from his Pagan religion but from a core intuition than “whispers there’s more to life than the apparent world”. In his words: You’re here for a reason. Maybe... Read more
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